Many highway contractors know their strengths and weaknesses, meaning that they tend to be aware of the type of projects that “fit” them best. A contractor may be adept at sub-heavy, phased construction and interstate paving work. That same contractor may not be as interested in county or full depth reconstruction work.
It is rare that all contractors value the same work equally in a given market. Schedule, bookings, crews, location, plant capacity, management structure, technical sophistication, material supply, trucking, and even heritage are a few things (the list goes on) that may influence what type of work a contractor prefers.
The best contractors exhibit empathy, in that they understand what projects their competitors are best at, and why they would rather one type of work over another. The real reasons why and what drives those things are critical insights in a low bid environment.
In order to segment, a contractor needs to separate jobs by user-defined types of work. In today’s busy world, estimators are swamped in a sea of pre bids, takeoffs, bid reviews, bid reviews, job rides, estimating, and analysis. Rarely is there enough time in the day. The simple process of analyzing margins and bid spreads on similar past projects by project type and then using this intelligence to one’s advantage on future bids can move the needle in an impactful way by adding money to the bottom line. Marketers will tell you if you try to be everything to everybody that you will likely end up selling to no one. They are right. When highway contractors segment, they can avoid the jobs that they don’t want or need and focus their efforts on the ones that matter.
Thank you for reading our post. At Edgevanta, our proprietary SaaS platform enables highway contractors to track and forecast critical market dynamics and increase the predictability of the project acquisition process.
Sincerely,
Tristan Wilson
CEO and Founder
Edgevanta, LLC
