Material shortages and supply chain snags are still crushing builds nationwide. It’s going to take more than a magic word and a snap of your fingers to get that building material delivery in on time. The truth is, these days, you need more than just a building material supplier to keep projects on track.
Delays on large-scale construction projects are tough to dodge completely. Even before the pandemic, the median delay for projects was about 100 days. But now those delays are up 100%. The data is not good for all involved.
In early 2022, analysis showed the median delay had doubled to over 200 days. Almost nine in 10 large-scale projects are being delivered late. Nearly a quarter are delivered more than 250 days late and 13.4% are delayed by at least a year!
It’s a nightmare. How did we get here? Labor is harder to find, for one. Bottlenecks in the supply chain and volatile material costs aren’t doing projects any favors either.
Material prices have spiked higher than at any point since data collection began in 1987. An analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that construction input prices have surged 24% in just the past year. Steel mill products have seen the worst of it — they’re up 112%.
Breakdowns in the supply chain, pent-up demand, and inflation have combined into a disaster for material costs. Some contractors are combating this with “ghost orders” and stockpiling supplies in warehouses…without a project lined up to use them yet. This makes things even more expensive and harder to find for folks that need a rapid building material delivery for an urgent project.
Delays are inevitable. Material prices are high. What can you do?
If you’re trusting ordinary building material suppliers to have what you want, when you want it, you’re banking on a prayer. The best solution is to start sooner and work together with an end-to-end material partner like Troop Industrial. Kick off the pre-planning and pre-construction phase well ahead of groundbreaking with predictive project intel and sophisticated construction material management. At Troop, we’ll help you anticipate delays and material market conditions so that you can get the tools, equipment, and material you need on-site before you need them.
Like A&P told Construction Dive, “We’re telling our owners that once we start, we can still build their job in 11 months, but we can’t start it right away, because after a couple months on site, we’d have to stop and wait for steel.” Instead, A&P knows that the first two months should be spent “ordering to get material there so it’s on-site, or in a bonded warehouse, or in storage bins. Wherever you can put it just to make sure you’ve got it and it’s captured.”
Some contractors are kicking off pre-planning as far as 18 months ahead of groundbreaking — nearly a year earlier than normal. Their proactive approach pays off by eliminating delays later on.
Troop Industrial’s Projexx Group is your special ops team for tracking and monitoring material seamlessly in real-time to optimize mega projects and save money — even millions — where it counts. We deliver cloud-based building material management that helps you track more, save more, and improve your capital projects’ efficiency. Work with us and keep your build on track. We have experienced a lot of success working side by side with contractors as part of the project team. This approach produces a greater result than just a transactional relationship.
When we work together as opposed to just quoting a bill of material and being kept at arm's length, we see better communication, better understanding of the challenges on both sides, and things run smoother throughout the project. We all have to be smarter and more tactical going forward. Doing things as they've always been done is not working and is detrimental to a project's success. We have solutions to the current market challenges. We have been offering these solutions for years and they are more relevant than ever.
Give us a call and let's dive into your project together, as a team!