Most building firms will agree with the statement that labor costs are one of the biggest budget items for each project. That is why it is critically important to avoid any risks of faults and poor estimating. According to the latest statistics, about 50% of the project budget comes to labor expenditures together with taxes, compensations, bonuses, and many more. How to plan all these costs risk-free? It is possible with modern digital solutions first of all.
For example, software for bidding construction jobs excludes most challenges in the context of labor budgeting routines. Let’s take a look at the full list of tips to improve your estimating and budget planning when it comes to calculations of payments for work in construction. You will get five ways to reduce the risk of errors and poor budgeting this way.
5 Tips on How to Plan Direct Labor Budget Risk-Free
First, let’s understand why it’s necessary to have risk-free labor budgeting. To start with, you help your stakeholders forecast and estimate all the costs accurately. All your team members will get essential insights about labor budgeting and will see a real picture for further project development.
Additionally, you will understand the feasibility and profitability of your construction order at the initial stage (tenders and bids). Sometimes collaboration with professional builders and other performers costs too much while your bid will not cover all the expenditures. That is why the project can be far from feasible for your company and will not bring good money.
Among other benefits of well-though labor budgeting are:
• Timely detection of all the resource management flaws;
• A well-balanced general project budget with labor costs and other expenditures;
• Reduction of labor costs at the very beginning of the project.
If you pay more attention to the planning of the labor budget, you will see all the ways to save funds and invest them into other profitable building projects. Here are five tips to improve your budgeting performance.
1 – Determine True Value of Direct Labor Budgeting
You need to understand the true value of your budgeting at the very beginning. For this purpose, start with the calculation of the hourly cost of labor. Then, pick sides with the production units. And now, it is high time to calculate labor hours per each construction item separately. When you get data entries about the cost per unit, you can multiply this figure by the number of items required for the building order you are estimating at the moment.
2 – Compare Direct and Indirect Labor Costs
The most honest and accurate budgeting starts with estimating, calculations, and comparisons of all the labor costs (including direct and indirect ones). For example, you should take into account payrolls, taxes, compensations, commissions, fines, recruitment bonuses, expenses for training, and pay-time-off terms.
3 – Analyze Former Projects
Sometimes the reasons for overruns and other budget weak spots can be detected easily with the help of former estimates and the results of your contractors. Analyze and see previous errors to avoid them while working with new orders.
4 – Take into Consideration Minor Data Entries
Remember that there always are minor information and insights that help you plan your labor costs better. For example, you should take a closer look at labor capacity, overrun costs, statistics generated from other specialized resources (corporate databases, cloud-based storage, e-reporting spreadsheet).
5 – Have a Strategy and Act
Your analytical background should be perfect. Zero risks are about budget planning based on all the collected insights at once. Invite all your managers and top leads to analyze faults, risks, and solutions together. Have a win-win strategy and always remember about the power of the digital environment with modern software!
