As the sole contractors for home improvement projects, our building company covers everything from carpentry services to painting and decorating. We always ensure all work in Epsom, Guildford, Farnham and across Surrey is completed to the highest standards, from start to finish. To maintain a tidy site, but with a keen eye on their business profitability, a team of builders will keep waste to a minimum. It isn’t always easy to predict where waste will come from or what can be done to reduce it. Most people think of waste as something that needs discarding, but the term covers any materials beyond what builders need to complete the job.
In this blog post, we look at a few simple solutions builders can consider to mitigate the cost of waste, satisfy customers' expectations of cleanliness and still turn a profit.
Waste falls into three different categories, and each one has implications on construction. The three categories are:
Knowing where these waste types come from, builders can create waste management plans. These plans will help minimise losses when building homes, extensions and conversions.
This is a term used to describe the minimum amount of material needed for the best results on a project, but which will still generate waste. Let’s take studs as an example. A building company must order extra studs to replace faulty studs, or they will need to cut whole tiles to fit in around wall or floor perimeters tidily. It is impossible to complete a job without generating required waste at all.
To control costs for themselves, and for customers in Guildford, Farnham and Surrey, builders must know exactly how much material they will need for each specific stage of the job. The solution is simpler than you might think.
Planning goes a long way, and if builders can determine the amount of material needed to complete a build in several phases, or to refurbish just one room, they can order more accurately. By using flooring layouts for tiles, as an example, or by calculating material use down to the finer numbers, it is possible to cut down on surplus ordering and to save money.
That said, always allow a little extra on top when ordering. There is nothing worse than underordering, then not being able to find a matching material.
This is the easiest waste for builders to identify. Materials thrown into skips, left lying around sites, or cut inaccurately due to carelessness and then thrown away are all visible waste. Unlike required waste, visible waste goes beyond the expected usage volumes, even with a small tolerance added on top of an order. In this situation, builders end up paying twice: once for purchasing materials and once to dispose of them.
This is bad for business, and builders must be more proactive onsite.
It is possible to cut back on visible waste by taking an inventory of materials currently onsite, looking at how off-cuts or discarded materials could be used, and reviewing the estimating process based on the amount of visible waste found per job to establish a more accurate waste factor percentage.
It is impossible to see insulation, sheathing, drywall and framing materials once they have been installed and covered, so it is equally difficult to be accurate with hidden waste assessments. Even so, with a plan in place, it is possible for builders to make reductions when ordering, and to control how other contractors use materials which fall into the hidden waste category.
Using scope to address hidden waste on sites, especially with stud partitioning and framework, will make jobs more profitable for builders and less costly for their customers.
Knowing exactly what is needed helps a building company to quote with more accuracy. Using a vague term like “three-stud corner” will lead to two extra studs being used per corner when one would suffice. Spread out the extra cost of studs over an entire property, and this is nothing more than money down the drain.
Call us today to discuss your upcoming home improvement project requirements in Guildford, Farnham and Surrey. We cover everything from painting and decorating and carpentry services to extensions, renovations and conversions.