‘A penny saved is a penny earned’
Be it an individual or an organization, this statement is true to what it says and therefore followed by many across all domains and aspects of life. But the fact here is, truth is many times sweeter and therefore it would not be incorrect to say that ‘A penny saved is many pennies earned’.
When it comes to saving or earning money, ‘Construction Contractors’ today are largely impacted organizations. COVID crisis has albeit worsened the situation but is also providing an opportunity to reset.
External factors which have impacted the construction industry in the last few years, have come in the form of setting up of new laws, regulations, compliance, push for skill development etc., all involving the construction industry. All these have already started injecting more of professionalism in the industry albeit a bit slow and therefore gradually eliminating the influence of ‘Thekedari’ i.e., the traditional ways of running contracting business.
When we hear things such as giving an ‘Appointment Letter’ to the worker / tradesmen etc., (as announced during one of the briefings on the stimulus package in view impact of COVID 2019 by the GOI) many questions rise in our minds and to many of us.
Fundamental question to be asked by all major contracting organizations today is ‘has sub-contracting’ always benefited in the current format (earned money or eaten away our profits) or have we facilitated our traditional sub-contractors to become big? Some of the major contracting companies that we see today have been just a traditional labour supply contractor at one point of time. They seem to not only challenge large contracting houses, but many have surpassed when it comes to measuring their top and bottom lines.
The ‘New Wage Act’ if implemented soon, contracting organization would be perhaps monitored for all the migrant skilled workforce in the days to come. It makes a tremendous sense to go in contract with the staffing organizations who would be hiring all these migrant skilled workers under their roles or getting into one on one contract with the migrant skilled workers. It makes best fit-case scenario for an all-out transparent system involving the migrant and skilled workers. When a larger component of the workforce becomes a part of the formal economy, it facilitates to smoothen many disturbed and rough facets of the organization. This would bring in a paradigm shift in the way the construction industry operates today and facilitate growth in leaps and bounds and therefore be an accelerator to the growth of the country.
We need to reiterate and never to forget that ‘A Worker is the Key to the entire Construction Industry’ and would remain so forever. Growth of the worker is central to growth of any organization.
If things as mentioned above are to take shape in the coming days it would not only save large amount of money which generally goes unaccounted in the construction industry, it would also facilitate safe, qualitative and time bound completion of projects to a greater extent. Skill development and Productivity would then be on the path to improve at a faster rate than ever before. Improved administration of workers colonies, their camping facilities, timely wage payments, ease of working, safety measures etc., all would be then part of the reality to come in the days ahead.
COVID 2019 poses a once in lifetime opportunity for construction contracting companies to look inwards. Organizations need to focus and come out more strongly on macro issues such as
· Business Process Optimization & Automation
· Technology Adoption & Integration
· Organization Re-Structuring & Manpower Optimization
· Mechanization of Construction Operations
and also by,
· ‘Standardization’ i.e. standardizing what can be standardized and therefore using ‘Artificial Intelligence’ where ‘Standardization’ is implemented for all obvious benefits.
Any improvements across the factors as mentioned above should be from the perspective of delivering ‘Value’ to the stakeholders, early and often. It is the dynamic nature of the projects which calls for deploying more ‘Agile’ methods. Agile because projects are at the center of the organizational business and their requirements, solutions keep evolving as the project progresses. Outputs are delivered more frequently and at last possible moments. Large number of stakeholders make ‘Collaboration’ as the central tool for these agile methods. Building ‘Trust’ with all stakeholders would only make the foundation of ‘Cooperative (Partnering) & Collaborative Leadership’ more stronger. Facilitating our stakeholders to mitigate risks would only result in a ‘Win-Win’ situation for all the stakeholders. On many occasions’ projects bring complexity with them and therefore involves managing changes more frequently. Any organizational complexity would only add to increase complexity of the project and therefore its deliverables.
The lessons we would be learning today in the context of ‘Opportunities and Threats’ posed by COVID 2019 and the practices that we put in place ‘Now’ would go a long way in defining our organizations existence, growth, prosperity and sustainability.