Sharing Insights & Guidance

Knowify just published a very useful job-costing guide for their customers -and anyone else who is looking for a way to maintain profit margins with the increasing cost of goods and services. With this guide, their goal is to give contractors everything they need to understand the fundamentals of job costing so they can unlock the insights needed to boost efficiency, performance, and profitability.For those companies just getting started to old pros, this user-friendly guide will be easy to implement.

When putting project costs together, companies need to make sure they’re not overlooking any areas that might come up and bite them later. With help from the industry, Knowify researched and got input from all angles of the cost chain to make sure they covered everything. What to track? How to job cost? How to create bid? How to problem solve with job costing?

It took about four months to complete, and is clearly and succinctly organized. They also put together a webinar to help companies use it correctly.

The end result is lots of kudos and a more indepth way to figure out costs. Check it out. (registration required). If you’re an ASA member, log into InfoHub and take a look (no registration needed)

A sneak preview of what’s next, according to Gil Resnick, at Knowify…a guide to financing for contractors. Stay tuned!

Dodge Momentum Index

"The Dodge Momentum Index returned to growth in February after falling 9% last month,” stated Sarah Martin, associate director of forecasting for Dodge Construction Network.

“The continued elevation in the DMI should provide hope that construction activity will grow in 2024. Owners and developers tend to put projects into planning until well after economic conditions weaken. During the Great Recession, for example, the DMI did not substantially decline until 2009. Therefore, the anticipated mild economic growth in 2023 could cause the DMI to moderate over the year, but it is unlikely to fall below historical norms"

Watch Sarah Martin discuss February’s DMI here.

Associated Builders and Contractors

Associated Builders and Contractors reported on March 14 that its Construction Backlog Indicator increased to 9.2 months in February, according to an ABC member survey conducted Feb. 20 to March 6. The reading is 1.2 months higher than in February 2022.

In addition ABC’s Construction Confidence Index reading for sales, profit margins and staffing levels increased in February. All three readings remain above the threshold of 50, indicating expectations of growth over the next six months.

Source: ABC

At the beginning of March, Associated Builders and Contractors released its fifth annual Top Performers publication, which lists its contractor members that build the country’s most enduring, innovative, high-quality construction projects, ranked by work hours. More…

Per Axios Markets, “construction job openings plunged nearly 50% down from 240,000 to 248,000 from December to January, which is the largest-ever monthly decline in construction job openings in the last 20 years. The sharp decline in construction job openings combined with the downturn in the investment in residential construction suggest that the economy is still adjusting to the big rate hikes of 2022, which could set the stage for the Federal Reserve Bank to accidentally over-hike, generating the hard economic landing many had been hoping to avoid.”