After years of consulting with construction & trades businesses, I’ve seen the same financial hurdles trip up even the most skilled operators.
The hard truth? Material and labour costs have spiralled out of control, creating a perfect storm with an industry-wide skilled workforce shortage.
Meanwhile, regulatory requirements for Class 2 buildings (now expanding to Class 9) add layers of complexity that weren’t there five years ago.
We’re sending talented tradespeople into business ownership with zero financial training. There’s simply no structured path from skilled tradesperson to successful business owner. No TAFE program, no tertiary pathway teaching the fundamentals.
The journey typically looks like this:
Complete apprenticeship.
Work under someone else.
Decide to go out on your own, & suddenly become responsible for estimating, job costing, managing cash flow, and compliance.
Too many skilled builders struggle when a simple project visibility issue spirals into a financial disaster.
Here’s what happens: Without precise tracking of where resources are working and how long tasks are taking, blind spots emerge. You can’t correctly account for materials across project phases or identify budget problems until it is too late.
On a recent project, poor coordination led to work being redone due to trade clashes.
What should have been an 18-month project stretched to 2.5 years – a 40% timeline blowout & a devastating ripple effect:
The entire business stayed static & couldn’t move to the next project.
Overhead kept eating into profits.
Preliminary costs (often underestimated) compounded monthly.
The most frustrating part?
This happens industry-wide. Nothing gets completed on time in construction.
Delays are practically guaranteed between weather disruptions, supply chain breakdowns, industrial action, and poor coordination.
Do you know what’s working?
Profitable contractors leverage two key advantages: value engineering and strong supplier networks.
They start value engineering at the tender stage, building relationships with suppliers, and creating opportunities throughout the design and early project phases.
These aren’t just vendor relationships—they’re strategic partnerships that determine which projects you win and which you lose.
After years of watching these problems repeat, we built Contractable to bring enterprise-grade financial controls to mid-market & SME construction businesses.
You shouldn’t need a six-figure budget to access tools that provide:
✔ Real-time project visibility across resources and materials
✔ Digital tracking that prevents the “we didn’t know” problem
✔ Value engineering tools from estimation through execution
✔ Systems that hold everyone accountable to the original program
When construction businesses gain visibility, they gain confidence that their pricing is accurate, jobs will be profitable, and they can be competitive without being reckless.
