The Competitive Contractor

We all are familiar with made in Australia, buy Australian made and so on. But we often don’t realise that such terms extend beyond manufactured products. Construction is one such example where 80% of major infrastructure projects are delivered by multinational firms. While local contractors are involved indirectly, there is the common question of – if we are constructing the project indirectly, w...

This episode of the Competitive Contractor Podcast is different as I challenged myself to put out a solo cast.  There are a lot of discussions taking place on how the construction industry, particularly at the contractor and sub-contractor level would be post-COVID (now!). These are great conversations but not as much if the context isn’t correct. And this is solo cast is about clarifying som...

Traditionally data in construction has been used as more of a reporting tool by business analysts, however, data can serve as a crucial informant of strategic decision making. Due to the inherently complex nature of construction projects, managing and processing vast amount of data from multiple sources, is a weighty task, and one, which results in the underutilization of much of the available dat...

Communication plays a massive part in our lives. It is the glue that keeps things rolling and the construction industry, in particular, is one that is based on interactions between people.  From discussions with employees, subcontractors, the clients,  and the external stakeholders, which not only includes the community, but also the future workforce and investors.  But despite it b...

Why don’t solutions to business problems stick? Why does it feel businesses operate on a treadmill when it comes to solving problems? These questions keep coming up in conversations with many executives, business owners and project managers. Interestingly, these questions have been discussed over the many years - constantly and rightfully so given the old line that change is a constant. But more s...

The construction industry has a poor track record of insolvencies. There are various reasons for this and the commonly talked about one is biased risk allocation, which is pushing risk downward in the value chain along with poor payment practices. When compared to other industries, construction also has a higher capital requirement due to investments in plant and equipment. Insolvency is a topic w...

A lot has changed and is changing in the construction industry. A transformation of the local infrastructure construction industry has been talked about for a long time. The good news is that with the jolt from COVID-19, there are now more conversations on changes needed in the construction industry. But not all changes can be initiated and implemented by businesses as they require collective effo...

Resilience will be the dominant word for organisations, boards and CEO’s going forwards. A lot has been said and written about resilience at the individual and business level recently and this podcast extends it to an industry level. The construction industry has been struggling with issues such as low profitability, skills shortage and mental health for a while. Industry resilience, therefore, be...

In this podcast, Robin Miles provides insights on decision making in a crisis. Robin Miles is the co-founder of Inspireme consulting. Robin assists companies, organisations and individuals to discover the power of inner leadership and the potential of united teams. In this podcast, Robin discusses the Harvard Negotiation project theory on collaboration and negotiation and benefits organisations ha...

In this podcast, Kate Burrows provides insights on successful tenders. Kate Burrows is the founder and managing director of The Tender Training College. Kate helps small and large contractors with tender submissions. In this podcast, Kate discusses the Go/No Go process contractors need to apply for tenders, important considerations when writing tenders, mistakes to avoid and the elements of a tend...