The Construction Business Blueprint #026 - The 10-Minute Audit Every Construction Business Owner Needs

Busy season doesn’t have to mean chaos.

 In this episode, Marc breaks down a practical step-by-step framework to help construction business owners take back control when workload increases.

This is not theory. It’s a working session.

If your business feels reactive when things get busy, this episode shows you exactly what to do next.

We focus on three key areas that determine whether busy season builds your business or breaks it:

1. Visibility
You cannot control what you cannot see. Marc walks through a 10-minute visibility audit so you can quickly assess live jobs, projected margins, current costs, cash in the bank, cash due in, and cash due out.

2. Non-negotiable standards
Busy season doesn’t destroy businesses, compromised standards do. You’ll define five standards that do not change no matter how busy things get, including margins, variations, weekly meetings, quote reviews, and payment terms.

3. Delegation and boundaries
Most owners think they’re overwhelmed because there’s too much work. The truth is that too much still runs through them. Marc shows you how to separate what only you can do from what somebody else should own, and how to delegate it properly.

Inside the episode, you’ll also get:

• A weekly numbers lock-in
• A five-standard exercise
• A delegation audit
• A 7-day reset plan
• A simple way to move from reactive busy to controlled busy

If revenue is rising but your stress is rising with it, your business is not ready for scale yet.

This episode shows you how to fix that.

If you want more time, more profit, and more control, watch this one properly, with a notebook.

Then reach out if you need help installing the systems behind it.

Chapters

00:00 Why Busy Season Creates Chaos

01:38 The 10 Minute Visibility Audit

05:01 The Weekly Numbers Meeting

06:11 The 5 Non-Negotiable Standards

12:30 The Delegation Audit

18:52 The 7 Day Business Reset

21:15 The Founder Shift

Transcript

March Busy Season Working Session

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, welcome back to the Construction Business Blueprint YouTube channel. On this week's episode, we're following on from the last two. If you're not aware of the last two, definitely like, definitely subscribe. Go back over and watch those. So we're talking about the busy season that is March, okay? And we're going to talk about how we control the busy season. And I'm going to do something a bit different on this week's episode. It's going to be practical. So if you are listening in and you're on the go or whatever else, definitely come back to this when you have time to sit down with pen and paper, or feel free to listen in or watch this and come back to this in any time. You can review this video, you can pause it, you can go through it because I'm actually going to talk you through an exact framework. Previously, we talked about how the busy season happens, why it happens, then we talked about how to identify it and things we can actually put in place. Now I'm actually going to challenge you to sit and think about it and write the things down on exactly your business, specific to you, things you can do, things you you know, the actual framework step by step. We're going to go through it point by point, step by step, so that after this, in as little as 30 minutes, you have something that you can do right now, not next week, not something fluffy written down that you can eventually get to, something you can literally do in the next 30 minutes to take your business to the next level. It's going to be a practical session that you can implement today, and there's going to be three live exercises that again can tighten your business immediately. It isn't just theory, it isn't just me talking, it's a working session. So again, if you're driving, listen, if you're in the office, grab a notebook, do whatever you can do. By the end of this video, we're going to tighten one, two, or several things inside your construction business right now. We're building busy season around three layers. We're going to look at visibility, we're going to look at non-negotiables, and we're going to look at delegation and boundaries. So I'm going to give you an exercise for each and talk about why they're important. Visibility speaks for itself. You cannot control what you cannot see. Most chaos in busy season comes from blind spots. To give you an example on that, if you don't know where every project is week by week, okay, where this amount complete, we're this amount spent against the budget, whatever it may be, the labor is at this point, whatever. Even even supplier inquiries, if you don't know what money is coming in, if you don't want no money is going out, then you have no visibility. That causes massive stress, massive friction, massive panic, and overwhelm. Let's let's fix the visibility. And this should only take maybe five, ten minutes. It's called a 10-minute visibility audit. Alright. Don't forget to pause the video if you need to to go through this step by step. So I've kind of broken this down to make it really simple. Obviously, people watching this are coming from all walks of life, every different trade, different parts of the world, different size businesses, different priorities, different stages in business, and whatever else. So I've tried to compact this into something that's going to suit everybody. Kind of quite general, but again, you can make it as specific as you want and tailored to your business. So we're going to look at some really important high-level visibility things that you should have visibility on in your business. Number one, how many live jobs do I currently have at the minute? As in ones that you have guys on site or that are live, they're in progress for one reason or another. What is the projected margin on each project? So you should know when you've priced that job what sort of margin you have on that. Now I'm not talking about markup, I'm talking about profit margin. Not this is what I think it's going to cost, and then I've added 20%. I want you to factor in obviously your overheads, and again, there's videos on that. If you don't know what that is, or if you want to reach out and ask me, I mean your cost plus your overheads plus your margin. What is the profit that you should have in the bank after this job is complete? What is the current cost to date on each of those life projects? If you've got a 100k job, what has that cost? What is that cost now to date? Say you're halfway through the job and you know it's it's a 100k project, you have 10% margin, 20% profit, so take 30% off that, you're sitting at 70k. You need to hit 70k budget in order to make 30%. Where are you sitting at now? Halfway through the job, you should be sitting around 30-35k, depending on what stage of the project it's at. That's just a rule of thumb. What is the current cost of date on each of those projects? Next, what is my cash in the bank? And when I say cash in the bank, I don't mean money that you should be set aside for VAT, money that well, yeah, you could have cash in the bank overall, but then you need to look at you know what is due in the next 30 days, what is owed in the next 30 days, so what is due to you in the next 30 days, what is your current bank balance at the minute? Lickal cash, what is due in the next 30 days, as in what is due to you in invoicing, and what is owed out in the next 30 days. So if you have all those sort of figures, and if you can't answer those without guessing, that's your first problem. So if you don't have access to those figures or you have no idea where those figures are going to come from, that is a major issue. Busy season requires weekly visibility because the busier you are, the more you need to be on control and on top of things. So here's the rule: rule You must install a 30-minute weekly numbers lock-in meeting, the same time every week, absolutely non-negotiable. You need to review revenue in, costs out, margin per job, and a quick cash forecast. So that'll sort of give you the cash forecast and labour low labour allocation as well. So who needs to go where and when? No excuses, no skipping when it gets busy. If you don't control the numbers weekly during growth, then the growth will control you. You need to be very, very careful. So the action step is this before the week ends, schedule the weekly numbers in your calendar. So lock it in on your calendar. What after this or during this, what day this week, whenever you're watching this, or what day in the next few days are you going, or when are you going to allocate that time? Want you to literally take your phone out or open your calendar, and I want you to lock in an hour or 30 minutes, as if it is a meeting with yourself, and I want you to go through all of those numbers. If you're going through those numbers and you're thinking to yourself, I have no idea, well, then you need to reach out and we need to solve that problem. So that was number one. That's non-negotiable. But we're going to look at now the non-negotiable standards. So we talked about the numbers, we talked about the figures. Now I want to talk about standards, and this is where we protect identity. And if you're not familiar with this, this is what I talked about in the last two episodes. Busy season doesn't destroy businesses, compromise standards do. So again, in the busy season, if you're a founder, if you're building the business, the busy season is where you build the business. If you're an operator, tradesman, and you're in that way of thinking, that way of an identity, the busy period could break you. Here's exercise two. I want you to define your five busy season standards. I want you to write down five things that do not change no matter how busy you are, no matter what is going on, no matter what pressure you're under, five things that you do not let slip. Absolutely non-negotiable to you and your business. So to give you some examples, our minimum gross margin does not go below X percent. Whether you're commercial, domestic, whatever, some of my guys are you know 10% on a large commercial scale, millions, some of my guys are 40, 45, 50% on a domestic scale. So whatever that is for your business, I want you to lock in what your minimum that you will never go below on any project. That's your new standard, lock that in. Our minimum gross profit on any project is X percent. Then another one could be all variations written down and confirmed in writing before any work continues. That's a non-negotiable standard. So moving forward, that's how you're going to stop yourself from getting bit in the ass down the line with client disputes, leaking cash and jobs, and whatever else. So that's crucial. One of them could be all variations to be tracked in writing because if it isn't written down, it didn't happen before any work continues. Another one could be weekly meetings happen every week, regardless, no matter what. So we touched on it above. That could be a meeting with yourself or a meeting with the team or both. No verbal discounts. So again, no agreeing things, no, yeah, okay, we'll take a few percent off or we'll do whatever. No verbal discounts, no verbal agreements, no knee-jerk discounts in a panic. It could be all quotes reviewed before sending out, non-negotiable. I need to have visibility on every price that goes out this door, a quick high-level review. If that's difficult, you need to look at how your quotes are being presented. You need to look at, you know, you need to have questions that you need to ask to the guys if they're doing their doing quotes for you, if you've got an estimator. How did you get to this cost? Ask them questions, same questions in every job. You know, review the scope, review the spec, get them to highlight things and get them to present that to you. So if you're not getting enough detail in the coach and you need more detail in order to make that decision faster, then you need to put that in place. But regardless, all quotes need to be reviewed before sending. Even if you're a guy on your own doing your own quoting, you may have done that quote over the space of a week. It's important before that goes out the door, have a sense check, read over that, just review it, make sure nothing's missing. Look at the drawings again, look at the site audit when you've gone and done your your pictures or whatever of the job before you've quoted it. You know, look through messages from the glant, emails, whatever documentation you've had from the architect, whatever. Just review everything again at a high level, make sure you've got everything included before it goes out the door. That could be a non-negotiable site quality checklist completed weekly. That could be another one. So making sure that you get a progress update or or a quality update or sign-off sheets from the guys every week or at every job, that could be a non-negotiable. If you're somebody who has felt pain on not knowing where jobs are at the end of the week, you know, not being able to have visibility on sites unless you're physically there, you know, this is something that your team can implement. You know, getting the team to send you photographs of jobs complete on a daily basis, maybe just sending you a text on here's an update on where we are. If you've a bigger company and you've got you know, four men, site managers, get them to do a site audit pro or something like that to show you where the job's at, what the progress of the site is, or it could be introducing wall closure sign-offs, ceiling closure sign-offs, sign-offs from the client to check on progress. If you're somebody who does milestone payments, it could be this is the progress milestone, one of your guys on site gets a customer to sign it, and then you invoice accordingly. So there's so many things you could do there, but that could be something that you could introduce as a non-negotiable, and then another one could be payment terms enforced. So if you're a company sitting there that your clients are constantly missing dates, missing payments, missing these sort of things, it could be that payment terms are enforced, non-negotiable. If it's not in your your quote, get it in your quote. Deposits, weekly payments, milestone payments, whatever it may be, get it mapped out, give it to the client, show them exactly what you expect. And if something is missed by the client or someone breaches the agreement, stop, reach out, have the conversation, non-negotiable, do not let it slip. I hear plenty of guys all the time they get to a payment date on a Friday, it doesn't happen. They let it go, they wait until next Friday, they say nothing because they're it's an awkward conversation to have. Make it non-negotiable standard now that if a payment is missed, or even checking with a client on a Wednesday, if payments due on a Friday, hi Jimmy, just checking in, payments due on Friday, as we agreed, everything's still okay with that. Anything need clarified, great, perfect, move on. Once you've got your five, I want you to ask yourself something personally or honestly. Out of the five things that maybe you've written down, have these slipped before? Because standards again are easy in calm periods. It's easy when you're here now, maybe writing this down now when maybe you're sitting in the evening or you're sitting at the weekend, but they matter in the pressure periods. This is why we're doing this, this is why we're making them non-negotiable. You need to say to yourself in your head or out loud that these five standards do not flex. We do not buckle on these standards, non-negotiable. These are rules that we are now going to live by, adhere by. I'm gonna let my my guys know, my team know, my clients know, everybody's gonna know that these are non-negotiable. This is our identity now, these are standards that our company lived by, and we do not follow no standards whatsoever. If they do flex, if you're looking at this on a weekly basis, I would advise you to review these five. Did we do these five things this week? If they're not, then they're not standards, they're just preferences, they're nice to haves. So they need to be standards, standards are there to made not to be broken. And the business season is where this identity is tested, where you're going to be tested on these. So you need to choose your identity now. When you're looking at these, you need to choose them, you need to look at them and maybe say, Yeah, this has happened before, this happens all the time. This is what it caused me personally, this is what it caused the business financially, this is what it caused the team, this is the pain I've gone through when I've let this slip before, and that needs to be a reminder to never let it happen again. Okay, delegation boundaries. This is a third one, and this is again, these are the three key ones that I see repeating time and time again. Or I've had experience with myself time and time again, and even sometimes now, currently, in this current business. So, this is where most business owners will break. You'll think you're overwhelmed because of workflow. Okay, there's too much work, there's too much work, I'm overwhelmed, but you're overwhelmed because everything still runs through you and relies on you. That's why we're gonna fix that right now. This is the only I list you could call, and I want you to draw two columns. Okay, I want you on the left column, I want you to write only I can do, and on the right column, I want you to say somebody else could do. Okay, and I want you to be honest. I'll give you some examples of things that only you can do might be. So it might be final pricing approval, it could be submitting invoices, it could be doing the wages, it could be strategic planning, in other words, reviewing what projects we're gonna price, what clients we're gonna work with. It could be client negotiations on costs for things, it could be contract negotiations, it could be hiring decisions, fire decisions, whatever it may be. There are some things that you may be an example of a business owner at a higher level who decides these are these are founder, founder things that only I can control. They should be really decision-making activities, not physical activities. They should be what decision needs to be made, who can make this, only I can make this because it it it dictates the trajectory or where we're going in business. Okay, so that these decisions decide where we're going, the direction we're going, how fast we're going to go, blah blah blah, who we're working with, etc. Examples of things that somebody else could do is ordering materials, booking deliveries, chasing timesheets, tracking the projects, scheduling the labor, preparing quotes as in templates, drafts, you know, you you could get the price, you could negotiate it and you could give it to somebody else and say, Go and put that price together, submit the quote, copy me into the email. Basic site coordination. If you're at a business now at a certain level, and you've you've team underneath you and everything else, you've guys on site who are in a sort of more senior role, but you're still getting calls about should we do this this way, should we do that that way? What I call site-related issues, those things the phone shouldn't still be ringing about. If you have guys in place to deal with that, then that needs to be delegated, somebody needs to be taking ownership, making those decisions. You know, I've had this conversation several times before where business owners are getting the same calls from the same people all the time, guys who they deem to be in charge, senior guys, managers, whatever it may be, and they're ringing them about site-related stuff, real site-related, basic things. These guys do have the knowledge, they have the experience, but they struggle to make the decision. And I would often say to my guys, the phone constantly rings, constantly rings, stop answering the phone. And for you, that may seem mental. That's crazy. Don't answer the phone. How will they ever know? They know the answer to the question that they're asking. We're looking at doing this. Do you think we should finish it like this or finish it like that? They know the answer to that question. They've been working for you for long enough, they've been dealing with you for long enough, they know how that goes. They're relying on you because you're always stepping in to make the decision. So take the step back, let them make the decision and deal with it later. So if the phone's constantly ringing, I know we're labouring on this point, but if the phone is constantly ringing or the same shit all the time from the same people, the guys that should be taking responsibility, don't answer the phone. Miss the call, ring them back an hour later, and I guarantee you that whatever question they had, if they forgot what they were going to ask you because they've dealt with themselves already, or it wasn't even an issue in the first place. Nine times out of ten, that'll be the case. Here's the uncomfortable part. By now, you should have your list in front of you. So if your right column is filled with all the stuff that other people could do, but there's nobody there to do it, then there's a delegation problem, there's a structure problem, there's a team issue, or whatever it may be. It's not that there's too much to do, there's not enough people in the right places to do those tasks. So it's solved by tightening rules. It doesn't mean go out and hire people left, right, and centre. It means give people more responsibility, but do it in a really controlled way. Explain it to them, give them the training, take the time. Don't just say, guys, now you're ordering your own materials by yourself now. You need to then put purchase orders in place, you need to explain how that's done, who the guys that they're going to are, how many quotes they need to get. So there's ways of doing these things, not just a case of taking this list on the right and going, right, you're doing this now. You need to look at every one of them and say, Do I have a process for this? Do I have a standard for this? Is this all in my head, or could this be explained to somebody else and somebody else could be trained to do it? Those kind of conversations need to be happening. These busy periods aren't solved by working harder, they're solved by tightening the rules. And the next step is this I want you to pick just one task, not if you've got 10, whatever else, just pick one from the somebody else should do column and delegate it this week properly, not vaguely, but properly. Explain what it is that you want them to do. Explain what the outcome should be, define the standards. So this is how it's done well, this is how it's done poorly. Set a reporting rhythm. So I want you to order materials on a daily basis from now on, but I want you to maybe let's start a WhatsApp group and you can let me know what materials are ordered from who every week or what every day. You know, use the purchase orders, tie in with me on a Thursday, let me know what's happening, what you're ordering, what's going on, and just confirm ownership. Now, this is what I'm the responsibility that I'm giving you now. You know, explain this, have the conversation. Don't just say you can order materials now and walk off. That's that's gonna land the same way, and you're gonna end up having the same conversation that I have with business owners all the time. I tried that and it didn't work, and it's because of how you approached it, it's because of how you delegate it. It's not enough just to tell somebody they're doing something now and you step away. You need to explain the outcome, define the standard, set a reporting rhythm, and confirm the ownership. Are you sure you know what you're doing here? Are you sure you're happy with this? Are you sure you're comfortable with this? Great, let's go. Small delegation upgrades, compound. So, what may seem insignificant, like letting the la letting somebody take responsibility for their materials, you will be surprised what that compound's in, how he shows up differently, how he takes ownership, how he takes leadership. He will stop bringing you about other small, nitpicking things. You will be freed up and you'll have more time, more headspace. You'll be surprised how one small, simple delegation task could completely transform your business, your time, your control, your profit, everything. So we're gonna finish with the seven-day reset plan, okay? And we're gonna make it even simpler. Over the next seven days, I want you to do seven things. Surprise, surprise. Day one to day seven. Day one, I want you to install the weekly's number lock in, right? So I want you to take that time in your week that you lock in reviewing those numbers. So say you start this today, number one will be now install that weekly lock-in on your numbers, knowing where those jobs are and everything else. If you're unsure, go back and listen to it again. So day two, tomorrow, for example, define five non-negotiable standards. Day three will be clarify rule ownership on three recurrent tasks. Day four could be review all live job margins. Day five could be checking your variation logs or making sure that that variation log is in place or checking where you are in variations on each project. Day six, you could review labor allocation, so who's going where and when. And then day number seven is probably the most important one: leadership reflection. I want you to sit on day seven, so you could do this Monday through to Sunday. On Sunday night, you could sit down. I know it's people's day day to switch off, but you know, if you take an hour before bed, after the kids are in bed, after everything's settled, after you've had dinner, and you take 20-30 minutes to just sit down with yourself and say, where did I react this week? You know, over the other six days, did this happen? Did that happen? If it did, great. What allowed that to happen? If it didn't, why not? And how do I fix that next week? So having that reflection is massive. Awareness is one, but reflection is another. You need to, you know, in order to be aware, you need to see where things are going wrong, where things are going well, and you need to know why. And that's control. It's not motivation, it's structure. So when you put that structure in place, you'll be surprised what's possible. After you do put this in place, you will then feel what controlled busy feels like. So when you're busy, you can still be in control. Because after you apply this, after you put this structure in place, something changes, you'll still be busy, but you'll feel completely different. You'll feel clearer, calmer, more decisive, less reactive. You'll feel more confident, you'll lead with more confidence because the structure, the visibility, it reduces noise, the clarity reduces noise, and chaos is usually structural weakness, it's not workload, so you need to put the structure in place. And we've just talked about exactly how to do that. So it's what I call the founder shift. When you make that shift, I call it the founder shift. I always talk about things in operator mode or in founder mode, and I'm gonna be very blunt. If revenue increases and your stress increases equally, then your business was not ready for scale. Because when you scale with problems, you all you're doing is scale those problems, amplifying those problems, and even problems you didn't think you had will start to show the cracks will appear as things get busier and as you get bigger. So that'll usually happen when you are operating at the center of everything. So, in other words, you cannot take a step back, you cannot step away, you cannot do anything because it all falls apart. So your business isn't really a business. You've just got a job, you've got a new shround your neck that you can't escape from. So, busy season should increase the leadership, it should increase the business, it should improve the business. All those things. So ask yourself this are you building a business or are you just carrying one? So if after watching this or during watching this episode you actually put those things in place, well, congratulations because you are now 10-20 steps further than all of your competitors, other guys around you who are sitting just going through the same chaos and the same thing week on week. What you've done is you've put a pattern interrupt in place, you've taken action, but only if you go away and you maintain these things, maintain these standards. And if you didn't, if you listen to this and you didn't go through the exercises, maybe you're listening, go back, take the time and do it. And if you want help installing any of these things, so if you we went through the first thing, which was the numbers, and you have no visibility on numbers, you have no control over any of the finances, you have no idea where to even start, well, then reach out. That's what I'm here to do. I've built a whole business doing this, helping others through 20 years' experience in the industry. We help clients do this on a daily basis with massive results. Just go and check out the results on our pages and you'll see for yourself. So, look, if you need help, don't sit there, don't listen to this and think that's great, but how does that impact me or how do I do this? Reach out, take action, and let's get it done.