The latest business and management best practices, written by CONTRACTOR columnists and other industry professionals, for plumbing and mechanical contractors
AN interesting article in Newsweek entitled, "Darling, It'll All Be YoursSoon," got me thinking. The article explains how "the inheritance boom is quietly reshaping how we think about death." How true. When I began my professional practice (as a...
This economic bull market weve been in for the past 15 or more years has been something, hasnt it? No one alive has ever seen such an unbroken summer of growth and prosperity, with just the right amounts of rain, wind, sun and clouds to convince...
Year after year, our office is asked to give a second opinion on the completed estate plans of owners of family businesses. It is rare to analyze the life insurance policies of a real-life client and find that all is as it should be. Typically, we...
Employers have lots of opportunities to gain information about employees and prospective employees through applications, interviews, testing, employee evaluations, complaints, requests for leave, insurance, and on and on. Most of this information...
Our typical consulting assignment is to put together a wealth transfer plan for a successful business owner. Invariably, the client brings up two critical and related operational problems: How do I keep my top executives? (The headhunters usually...
It is common for bid documents to give the potential bidder information about the site. Frequently, this is a soils report or soil borings, or information about where spoils can be disposed of or where fill material can be found. This information...
All contractors know that some kinds of work are more difficult and expensive to do than other work. When a contractor prepares a lump-sum price for a bid that contains different types of work, the individual prices get lost in the process, unless...
Virtually every contractor or subcontractor is required by the person hiring it to provide insurance. In some cases, it is left up to the contractor to determine what types and limits it will provide, but in many situations the contractor is told...
Just as night follows day, when the grim reaper takes dad, someday mom will follow. Sometimes mom goes first and dad follows. Either way, after both mom and dad are gone, the IRS almost always gets a big payday. Since the business is usually the...
In the course of talking shop with contractors from various parts of the country, Im always surprised how few require that their project managers keep a personal project diary. Keeping a project journal is not so important to project managers...
