A New York appellate court recently affirmed what we have long known; that an owner is not a beneficiary of subcontractor default insurance. In that case, the developer used a construction manager on a Manhattan hi-rise project. The construction manager had obtained Subguard coverage, but this didn't protect the owner when the largest subcontractor, the [...]
Bond premiums are normally very straight-forward, but there a couple of things you should look for to avoid surprises. If a job is going to run longer than 12 or 24 months, most sureties will charge an extra amount of 1% per month for each month over their given time limit. If the warranty period [...]
According to the Florida Department of Transportation, your firm very likely qualifies as a disadvantaged business enterprise. You may be thinking that you are not a member of a minority, or you are not a female, but that doesn't matter. The FDOT runs a race and gender neutral DBE Certification Program. "Neutral" means that race [...]
According to Berkshire Hathaway's Businesswire, construction in Florida's metropolitan areas rose 39.8% in the second quarter of this years compared to the same time a year ago. Forbes Magazine listed three Florida Cities in the top twenty cities in the nation with the most new construction. This information was compiled by McGraw-Hill Construction data. There was [...]
We just printed 11,000 newsletters. They were delivered to SWOP to be tabbed, addressed, sorted, and delivered to the Post Office. That is a lot of work done for us by SWOP. How much work is that? Look at the boxes of newsletters behind Cheryl. That is what 11,000 newsletters look like. Seminole Work Opportunity Program [...]
It is the duty of the owner on a private job to prepare it and sign it. Many might not know this, but the lender is responsible to record it. If there isn't a lender, then the owner should record it. The owner is the one who should post a certified copy on the job site. This [...]
It is a faithful old saying that “What you can measure, you can manage”. That truth spurs us all to be sure we can measure the important numbers dear to us like job cost, overhead expense, revenues and the like. Often, the quality of our measuring tools determines the quality of our management. Measuring past [...]
I have a major in Econ/Business. My economics professor once accurately pointed out that if you took all the economists in the country and laid them down head to toe, they still couldn't reach a conclusion. Yet, an awful lot of them are now leaning towards better times in 2013 and 2014. They predict that [...]
One of the areas that the SBA is working with contractors is in being more accepting on the quality of financial statements you prepare. For many contractors, the cost of bonding is really the cost they have to spend on CPA's and accountants to prepare the financial information required by the surety. So it is [...]
For many years, if you wanted to do work over $250,0000 for the Florida Department of Transportation, you had to submit a CPA audit within four months of your fiscal year end. An audit can be a very expensive and time consuming endeavor. The FDOT has revised their requirements. More of their work can now [...]