WHAT DOES
‘GOOD’ LOOK LIKE?
Small to medium construction businesses are currently facing a barrage of challenges, making it more crucial than ever to have a good, resilient business. But what does good look like? We talk to Graham Burke about the 5 biggest industry issues... plus a powerful new tool to help you gauge how well your business is faring.
1 Supply chain disruptions
Supply chain issues have been top of mind with the Covid-19 lockdowns, but they don’t come out of the blue. What the lockdowns have highlighted is how fragile New Zealand’s supply chain is in many instances. We have far greater reliance than ever before on product from overseas—and increasingly from one country. This means
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if there are issues offshore, such as shipping problems, our supply chain is affected straight away... and so are product costs.
2 Product cost increases
Today’s businesses tend to use a ‘just in time’ model, ordering everything as we need it and holding less stock. Perhaps we need to consider more forward planning—ordering
further in advance and holding more stock—to avoid project delays and resulting product cost increases. Here and overseas, product prices have been escalating at a rate we haven’t seen since the 1980s. Businesses essentially have two choices: to have contracts that pass product price increases to the client, or to purchase stock up front and lock in the contract price.
3 Labour shortages
We are experiencing a critical labour supply shortage that is likely to remain for some time, given the current high work demand. Even with the recent acceleration in apprentice numbers, we can barely keep up with the numbers retiring in our ageing population. Some businesses have looked
