Every business has its bread and butter – the things that it needs to count on for a good day at the office. IT Firms need their reliability so that they can assist all the time with IT bugbears. Food companies need to use great ingredients to enhance flavors and taste. The bread and butter of business can also mean the tools of the trade, or the type of work that keeps a company in business. The bread and butter of an advertising company might be daily copywriting tasks – that sort of thing. However, there are no easy jobs in the construction industry. The bread and butter roles in this line of work still need the same dedication and focus as the top notch work. There is a huge amount of focus and responsibility on every single person within the construction industry to get their job right, every single time. We expect 100% out of our construction workers, because anything less doesn’t really mean a job well done – and it could end in disaster.
However, if a construction firm, or building agency uses terrible materials – it’s going to do a bad job no matter the effort. Shoddy acrylics, weak ceramics, cheap wood and bendy metals mean for a poor job all round. People want reliability, strength and resilience from their buildings and this cannot be achieved if a construction firm uses terrible materials.
Why do firms use bad materials? There are plenty of reasons. Sometimes, it’s pure laziness – a lot of building work needs improvisation and innovation on the job, but if there are no good materials around, a builder might simply dial it in and use terrible materials. This isn’t good enough. Bad materials are often cheaper, so a client might ask that they are used to cut costs. There might be ‘mates rates’ involved with a supplier who discounts cheaper and dodgier materials. If this is standard practice, it’s going to connote and signify laziness and unreliability in a firm. We went into a lot about making a good construction business, but that’s mostly common sense. It’s very easy for a construction business to use terrible materials in this work, and that’s going to look bad on the business.
How do you avoid using bad materials? It’s fairly simple – do your research. The construction industry is tight-knit and people will let you know the good from the bad. Read reviews and see this for yourself.
Similarly, listen to client feedback. If you’ve constantly got issues with metal rusting or panels warping, that highlights a metals issue, so what you’d do change your supply to aluminum sheets from RapidMetals for example. If tiles are constantly chipping, you’ll know you need to get some new tiles from a better supplier. It really is that simple. If you don’t act on this, you’re costing yourself business in the long run. You will find out quickly what works and what doesn’t work.
Materials can bring down a building, but constant use of terrible materials will also bring down a construction firm. Don’t risk this.
