Original article by: Rubin Brown
The ViewPoints Construction Services Blog is published by RubinBrown's Construction Services Group as a value-added approach keeping clients and contacts informed about current, relevant topics affecting the construction industry.
Positive cash flow and operating efficiencies are directly related to the skills and motivation of project managers. In order to entice project managers to work toward the best possible outcome on every construction job, you might consider developing an incentive program to reward those with the best monthly positive cash flow by job. Positive cash flow could allow the company to fund expenses with customer funds, rather than paying out of its own pocket. Analyzing this on a monthly basis can quickly highlight project managers that are managing their jobs well and those that may need some improvement. Additionally, the company can see which contracts may have issues going forward, whether it be related to billing, performance, efficiencies, etc.
While there may be a very simple explanation for poor cash flow on a job, the exercise of monitoring this may identify issues to be escalated above the project manager level. This could allow the company to take more of a proactive approach to job results as opposed to a reactive approach at project completion. Depending on the size of the company, this can be tracked company-wide, regionally or even down to specific contract types.
In the end, providing an incentive gets the whole team working toward a common goal and can even allow for some friendly competition within the company.
