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Going Paperless in Construction

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Drivers of Paperless Construction Digital collaboration and mobility is one of five trends identified by a McKinsey Global Institute study as shaping construction and capital projects. Specifically, the study points to the move of paperless projects, from the office to the workforce. In many ways, the move to a paperless construction industry is the natural consequence of solutions already in place, such as rapid digital mapping, next-generation building and information modeling, advanced analytics, the Internet of Things, and other digital technologies. More and more businesses in all industries have been evolving toward paperless processes. As soon as a digital solution becomes available at reasonable cost, most make the switch readily for the resulting gains in accuracy and productivity. You don’t see many fax machines anymore, do you? Once email became commonplace, businesses were quick to adopt it as the primary vehicle for written communication. More recently, with the introduction of cloud technology, paper record-keeping is on its way to...

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Construction Safety Training Using Immersive Virtual Reality

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Training professionals in every industry have long sought the best way to train workers on potentially dangerous tasks carried out in hazardous environments. Nowhere is the need for safe training solutions greater than in construction, where the untrained or unwary can encounter significant threats to their health and safety. No classroom training can do an adequate job of preparing workers for the reality of the jobsite. Fortunately, immersive virtual reality can. Safety Training using Immersive Virtual Reality Virtual reality technology has come a long way in recent years. Both hardware and software advances have made it possible to reproduce working environments and tasks with a high degree of realism. As the technology has become more sophisticated, it also has become more affordable, making safety training using immersive virtual reality within the reach of even smaller construction companies. It’s not only safety training that gets a boost from the use of immersive virtual reality. Immersive VR training lets workers get...

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Review of Construction Safety Statistics in 2022

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Construction Safety Statistics Although construction processes and equipment continue to evolve to make construction work safer, the industry remains one of the most dangerous in the United States. Construction accounts for only 6% of the country’s workforce but 20% of workplace fatalities. Construction safety statistics published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and other organizations paint a rather grim picture. Fatalities and Injuries in the U.S. Construction Industry According to BLS statistics, in 2020, 1,008 workers died in construction accidents—the third highest fatality rate of any industry. Of those deaths, 42 were related to crane operation and more than 300 to falls. Falls alone account for 34% of all deaths on construction job sites. According to OSHA, the top four causes of deaths in construction are falls, being struck by equipment, being caught in or in between objects, and electrocution. Together these four causes account for over 60% of all construction...

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Construction Material Shortage to Remain in 2023

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. The construction industry has experienced shortages of essential building materials, rising prices, and other supply chain issues since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and, in some cases, prior to its outbreak. These essential materials—the ones most heavily monitored and tracked year over year in terms of availability and price—include cement and concrete, steel, insulation materials, drywall, lumber, and HVAC equipment (especially air handlers, rooftop units, and air-cooled chillers). Causes of Supply Chain Issues The first factor that comes to mind, not only in the U.S., but around the world, is the pandemic. Extraction of resources and production of building materials didn’t come to a complete halt but fell off dramatically at the same time that demand was increasing. But with shutdowns and quarantines, transporting materials across borders and even domestically became extremely difficult, creating new supply chain issues or compounding existing backlogs and shortages that still are affecting global supply chains. Don’t underestimate the significance of the fact...

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Best Construction Podcasts

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Criteria for a Good Podcast A podcast is an audio series—audio files that are stored on and downloaded from a podcast hosting platform such as Spotify or Apple Podcasts. New episodes become available on a regular basis—typically weekly, biweekly, or monthly. The technology is simple enough and affordable enough for nearly anyone to produce their own podcast. Podcast series generally are created by people with a message, or opinion, or expert knowledge to share. The number of podcasts related to construction is growing exponentially. Quite frankly, some are more informative than others, and you may find that some address subjects that are more relevant to you than others. We’ve curated a list of construction podcasts considered to be among the best because they meet most or all of these criteria: The hosts are knowledgeable about a particular aspect of the construction industry. They focus on the needs and interests of a construction-oriented audience. They tell a compelling story and...

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Performance Bonds for Contractors with Bad Credit

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your performance bond needs. Understanding the purpose of performance bonds and how they work is key to understanding why bad credit will affect performance bonds. What Are Performance Bonds? Performance bonds are a type of construction surety bond commonly required of contractors. Under the federal Miller Act, contractors working on federally funded contracts in excess of $150,000 are legally required to furnish the project owner with a performance bond, as well as a payment bond. Most states have enacted similar legislation (“Little” Miller Acts) requiring performance and payment bonds from contractors working on state-funded projects of $100,000 or more. And private project owners and lenders increasingly are requiring performance bonds and sometimes payment bonds from contractors working on larger projects. The purpose of a performance bond is to protect the project owner financially if the contractor defaults on the contract and is unable to complete the job. One of the main reasons for default is a lack of capital to finish the job,...

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What Are Recession Proof Sectors in the Construction Industry?

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. What Is the Impact of Recession on Construction? The construction industry always is adversely affected during recessionary periods in the U.S. economy. During the Great Recession (December 2007 – June 2009), the U.S. construction industry saw nearly 2.5 million layoffs and the demise of nearly 150,000 construction companies. In fact, the financial pundits are divided in late 2022 about the likelihood of a recession during the coming months, as interest rates are increased to combat high inflation. There’s no sense in gambling one way or the other, as making the wrong judgment call can be ruinous for a construction company, especially for smaller contractors with limited financial resources. It does make sense, however, for contractors to position themselves to have the best chance of survival in the worst case scenario. The primary strategy for recession-proofing your construction business is to seek building projects in the industries generally considered to be recession proof sectors. What Are Recession Proof Sectors? The...

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Broadband Infrastructure Bill

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your construction bond needs. Funds for Broadband Infrastructure Bill Development The infrastructure investment and JOBS Act (IIJA) set aside $65 billion for broadband infrastructure bill deployment and affordability. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program will be distributing $42.45 billion of those funds to states and territories through the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). An additional $2 billion will be provided by NTIA through its Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program for broadband deployment and related services on tribal lands. And another $2 billion for broadband development will be distributed through the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service, the Distance Learning, Telemedicine, and Broadband program. It’s an investment that will make a tremendous difference in the lives of people living in previously unserved or underserved areas with little or no access to broadband Internet service. Encouragement for Public-Private Partnerships IIJA specifically encourages states to promote partnerships between public and private entities to plan and execute...

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Performance Bond Underwriting Process

Surety Bond Professionals is a family owned and operated bonding agency with over 30 years of experience. With access to a broad range of surety markets, our expert agents are ready to assist with all of your payment and performance bond needs. Underwriting Goals A performance bond underwriting process of any kind has two main goals: Assessing the risk of the contractor incurring claims if approved for a performance bond, and Assessing the financial risk to the bond’s guarantor in the event of claims against the bond. The results of this underwriting assessment determine whether an applicant is approved for a performance bond and, if so, how much the contractor will pay for the bond. How Performance Bonds Work These underwriting goals are derived from the way that performance bonds work in the construction industry. First, understand that performance bonds provide financial protection for the project owner (the “obligee”) requiring the bond, not for the contractor. A performance bond is a pledge by the contractor (the bond’s “principal”) to complete the work specified in the construction contract in accordance with the law, and the terms of the contract and of the surety bond agreement. Any violation by the principal...

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