With so many variables and so many different costs to consider, creating a construction budget can be a challenge to even the most experienced contractors. This guide is here to help construction business owners create more successful budgets for construction projects.
Consult Your Client
The first step to creating a comprehensive construction budget is to have a clear conversation with your client about your project’s details. You should try to get as many details as possible about the project from the client, as this will help you to understand the size of the budget you are working with.
Find Suppliers that Offer Trade Prices
If you are a relatively new company, you must take the time to find a supplier that offers trade prices. Even major companies like Tradefix Direct offer trade discounts which means that you don’t have to compromise on quality with discounts. Once you have secured a trade discount, you can then begin to more formally plan your construction budget.
Standard Consideration For Every Construction Project
No matter the specifications of the construction budget you are working on, you will need to make some standard considerations when creating a budget. Standard budget considerations you will need to make for any construction project are called hard costs, which can include:
- Insurance
Before beginning a construction project, you must have appropriate insurance. The insurance might be general business insurance, job-specific insurance, or general liability insurance.
- Permits
Some construction projects will require you to take out building permits from the local authority.
- Labor
Another important aspect of planning a successful construction budget is labor cost. You will need to consider all the people that will be involved in the construction process, from equipment operators to subcontractors. Labor costs can be one of the hardest costs to accurately predict when creating a construction budget. This is because it can be very difficult to predict how long a project will take before it is underway.
- Equipment and Construction Tools
Another hard cost that you will need to factor into your construction budget is equipment and tools. You should use all the information that you have available to calculate predicted expenditure on equipment and tools. If you are a newer company, it can be a little bit more difficult to calculate equipment costs because you do not have as much hard data to work from. However, for a successful budget, you need to work out all the costs associated with equipment and tools. Besides purchasing equipment and tools, you need to consider costs such as delivery prices, fuel, repairs, maintenance, and rental fees.
- Materials
The costs of materials are likely to be one of the major costs in your construction budget. As previously stated, finding a supplier that offers a trade discount is key to keeping the cost of materials low. You must strike the right balance between cost and quality to ensure that you are always able to execute your projects to the highest standard possible.
Create a Contingency Budget
Any successful construction budget does not only consider hard costs but acknowledges the realities of the business by including a contingency budget. A contingency budget is an amount of money that is set aside for unexpected expenses. Since the average construction project is likely to require overspending of between 10 to 20% of the initial budget, creating acontingency fund is key.