Depending on who you talk to, the term “Change Order” can solicit a broad range of reactions. The most common reactions might include heavy sighs, eye rolls, or pursed lips, while some uncommon ones could have you ducking for cover as every object within reach comes flying at your head. For many, Change Orders have done more than enough damage to a bottom line to warrant the type of disgust merely whispering the word can invoke. For others, however, Change Orders are the golden goose; these select few have mastered the art of the Change Order, and these are the ones you should be paying attention to. 

A favorite adage of mine is “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” But you have to know what you want to determine before you can know what needs to be measured. In construction, the industry with the lowest start-up survival rate nationwide*, what most business owners need to know is as simple as this – are we going to make it?

Your company may have started small, with little to no infrastructure to support the successful scale of your business. However, as you begin to experience periods of rapid growth, you will encounter challenges impairing the profitability, visibility, and quality of your company's jobs. Software plays a major role in helping you navigate these tricky times with ease, efficiency, and effectiveness.

John Wooden is a legend. During his 12 year tenure as the head coach of UCLA’s men’s basketball team, he won 10 national titles, including a record seven in a row. To put this in perspective, no other team has ever won more than two titles in a row – including national powerhouses like Duke, UNC, and Kentucky. Wooden’s success on the court will long remain the gold standard in the basketball community, but outside the sports world, his legacy is the incredible leadership that he displayed and passed along to others.

As a UDA Product Specialist, I spend a majority of my day working with construction professionals who are looking for construction management software. These professionals range from Residential Home Builders to Commercial General Contractors, Design-Build Firms to Multi-Family Developers, and large to small in company size and project scope. Every business is different, and while UDA's construction management software is designed to help just about anyone in this industry run a better business, we don’t take a one-size-fits-all approach with our clients. My job is to learn about the clients and their businesses, and act as a consultant to make the best software recommendation to fit their specific business needs. Sometimes, my recommendation ends up having to be that they need to take a step back and do some serious thinking before they will be ready to successfully implement project management software at their construction company. 

In a perfect world, construction project schedules follow the original approved timeline from start to finish. But, any experienced construction manager can tell you, in reality, the final project schedule will be vastly different from the initial project schedule. As the project progresses, it’s important to evaluate changes to the project schedule and understand what factors contribute to these changes. Implementing business intelligence methods like baseline reviews gives you the ability to analyze cause-and-effect within the project and adjust accordingly – now and in the future – to ensure success for your company.

If you've ever considered implementing a cloud server into your office processes, you know it is a daunting task. Without an IT background, the terminology alone is intimidating enough to make you forget about it. Luckily, I sat down with our resident AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, Ian Schaefer, to learn about the best way to set up a cloud network.

Around thirty percent of family-owned businesses are viable into the second generation, and only thirty-six percent of construction firms make it past their fifth year of business. For a family-owned construction company, the numbers are against you from the beginning. Successfully integrating the second generation of the family into the business is critical for its health, but it can be tricky. Read on to learn how to include the next generation with ease:

As a project team member in the field, we know your day is full of challenges – from unforeseen weather conditions to demanding schedules, your priorities and your work can often be thrown way off track. To be able to maintain focus successfully, you need to maximize your efficiency and centralize your information in one place that is organized and accessible. ConstructionOnline, UDA’s comprehensive project management solution, is designed exactly for this purpose – improving the business of doing construction. Having helped hundreds of team members just like you find success with ConstructionOnline, I’m sharing the 4 ways to transform your day:

As the Success Coordinator for ConstructionOnline here at UDA Technologies, I spend my days asking the question – what does success mean for you? See, each company comes to us seeking a different - albeit similar - solution. Our goal is the utmost success of each of our customers, so we open the discussion about your personal definition of success to ensure the return on your investment in a project management solution is focused on what is most valuable to you.