Business innovation: a practical exercise for the construction industry

Problem: a construction business turns over 1.000.000 € but the owner works 70 hours a week, because they spend 80% of their time on activities that generate no margin.

Solution: the blank sheet exercise to identify the 3-4 high-impact activities and redesign the week around them.

Result: the same turnover with 15 fewer hours per week, or +30% turnover for the same number of hours.

The day that repeats identically for 5 years

A window fitter in the Veneto with 8 employees. Turnover stable at around 1.000.000 €. Operating margin at 6%. Not bad, but not enough to sleep easy.

I asked him to describe a typical week. Monday: site visits and client calls. Tuesday: material orders, supplier management, a site problem. Wednesday: quotes. Thursday: site in the morning, office in the afternoon. Friday: invoices, bank, planning for next week. Saturday morning: things he didn't get done during the week.

Then I asked: "How different is this week from 3 years ago?"

Silence. "Practically identical."

"And the margin?"

"Practically identical."

That's the point. When you do the same things the same way, you get the same results. No surprise. But almost nobody stops to think about it, because the day is so full there's no time to think.

Innovating doesn't mean throwing out what works

The word "innovation" calls to mind complicated things. New software, new machinery, upheaval. But innovating in a construction business means something much simpler: stop doing the things that serve no purpose and devote that time to the things that make a difference.

You don't need to revolutionise the business. You need to understand where you're losing time and money without realising it, and shift that energy to margin-generating activities. The problem is that when you're in up to your neck, you can't see which activities really count and which are just keeping you busy.

The blank sheet exercise

Take a sheet of paper. Blank. No data from last year, no management software open, no references. Just you and one question: if you had to start from scratch with the skills you have today, what would you do to get the business to double its turnover in the next 12 months?

Not +10%. Double.

The reason I say double is simple. If you think about +10%, your brain says: "I'll do what I do now, a bit more." If you think about doubling, you're forced to think differently. You can't work twice the hours because they don't exist. You have to ask yourself which activities generate the result and which just fill your day.

Write on the sheet 3 concrete goals for the next 12 months. With numbers. Not "grow" or "improve". Numbers.

Then for each one, write the 2-3 actions that would bring you closest to that goal. Not 10 actions. Two or three.

A concrete example

A window installer who did this exercise wrote:

1. Bring operating margin from 6% to 12%
2. Close 40% of quotes instead of 25%
3. Reduce site delays by 50%

For the first goal, the actions: review prices on the 3 best-selling products (which account for 60% of turnover) and cut a supplier who costs 15% above average.

For the second: call every client within 48 hours of sending the quote and make a second contact after 7 days.

For the third: 15-minute meeting every Monday morning with site managers to plan the week.

Six actions in total. Not a 40-page strategic plan. Six concrete things that, added together, change the business's numbers.

High-impact activities

Not all hours of your day have equal value. There's a simple principle: 20% of what you do generates 80% of the results. The problem is that the remaining 80% of your time keeps you so busy you can't devote yourself to that 20%.

The left column is where money is made. The right column is where time gets spent.

The blank sheet is for exactly this: showing you the difference between being busy and being productive.

The three profit engines

When you do the blank sheet exercise, the high-impact activities always fall into three areas. Always. For any construction business.

1. Sales and marketing

How many quotes do you send every month? How many do you close? What's the average quote value? If you close 25% of quotes and get that to 35%, with the same number of site visits you invoice 40% more. Without working an extra hour.

That's innovation. You don't need a new machine. You need a follow-up process that works and someone to follow it every day.

2. Client experience

A satisfied client brings you 2-3 more clients in a year. An unsatisfied one costs you 5. Word of mouth in construction is worth more than any advertising campaign.

I saw a company in Lombardy hire a person dedicated to client service. Cost: 32.000 € a year. In the first year, the complaints rate fell by 60% and referrals increased by 45%. That person generated 200.000 € of new work from word of mouth. It's not a cost. It's the investment with the highest return of the year.

3. People

You can have the best process in the world, but if people don't know what they need to do, it doesn't work. Training a site manager to handle problems independently frees up 5-8 hours a week. Hours you can devote to the left-column activities in the table above.

Measuring the impact of what you change

The blank sheet exercise only works if you measure the results. Otherwise after 3 months you go back to doing the same things as before, because you "didn't see any difference." The difference is there, but if you don't measure it you don't see it. You need a few numbers, checked every month: margin per job, quote close rate, owner's hours on high-impact activities, average site completion time.

The key is having these numbers updated without spending half a day collecting them from scattered sheets. If you have to look for the data, you won't look. If they're in front of you in a report every Monday morning, you'll use them.

BAU Gest

The numbers you need, without wasting time looking for them

BAU Gest collects site, quote and margin data into a single report. Every Monday morning you know exactly where you're earning and where you're losing, without filling in Excel sheets.

See how it works

Swiss
Made

BAU Gest

Net margin24,2%

Active jobs8

Hours deviation+12%

The practical plan: what to do this week

Not in a month. This week.

Monday: take the blank sheet. Write 3 goals with numbers for the next 12 months. For each, write 2-3 concrete actions.

Tuesday: look at your diary from last week. Mark in one colour the hours spent on high-impact activities and in another colour the rest. Count the hours.

Wednesday: choose a single low-impact activity you do every week and find a way to eliminate, delegate or automate it. Just one. Done properly.

Friday: at the end of the week, count the high-impact hours again. If they've increased even by 2 hours, you're on the right track.

Repeat every week. After a month you will have shifted 8-10 weekly hours towards margin-generating activities. After a quarter you'll see the numbers move. Innovating in construction doesn't mean buying expensive technology or turning the business upside down. It means deciding how you want to spend your hours and building a system that actually lets you do it.