Customer Reviews

Building a Successful Construction Company

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are considering starting a construction business or trying to grow an existing contracting firm, this book offers hard won experience in a well written format. It is like having a conversation with a personal construction industry business coach.

The book lays out the numerous details you must be mindful and does not sugar coat the potential pitfalls you will probably come across. The appendices alone are a valuable compilation of resources that include a Strategic Business Plan Workbook, useful industry government website addresses, and sample forms and templates.

I previously worked with some of the top construction industry leaders in the New York City region developing courses for small contractors. I am confident that the instructors I retained from both the public and private sectors would be impressed with this comprehensive document. The book deserves to be incorporated into any construction and business management course curriculum directed to small contractors.

Robert Seidel

Building a Successful Construction Company contains very valuable advice; advice that people pay consultants dearly for when they need it. The writing style is very direct and user friendly. The depth of knowledge and the sophisticated writing style make this book fun to read. Despite its size, the book reads like a crash course in economics, marketing, finance, accounting, and entrepreneurship. The author displays a brilliant command of these disciplines and more, in addition to her thorough knowledge of the construction industry. The book is very detailed for its size and includes a wealth of informational resources that should prove very useful for the busy CEO. What makes this book extremely useful is that it applies to any geographical area and to all types of construction.

This book should find its place on the SBA's list of reference books and be placed on the book shelf of every chamber of commerce and trade association in every major city. It should be required reading for anyone studying to obtain a contractor's license as well as for those who are already managing their construction businesses.

Joe Halim,
Senior Professor,
Devry University

As an aspiring construction business entrepeneur, I've purchased several books to educate myself on starting a construction business. While most of the books I've purchased are very good, this book in particular stands head and shoulders above all the others. The construction business is very risky and the author addresses that issue right out of the starting blocks in Chapter 1 "Look before you Leap". Anyone who skims over that chapter is in for a bumpy ride. The emphasis on planning, organization, team building, company efficiency, legal risks and financials in subsequent chapters are what I would consider the essential nuts and bolts of successfully building a construction business. If I could point to a single quote that epitimizes the book it would be "You've got to do the hard thinking yourself and then commit your goals, strategies and action plans to paper. You probably just need a push and some guidance to get you started". I was just such a person. My only regret is that I did not have this book 30 years ago. Very highly recommended.

The author did an excellent job presenting the essential information every CEO must know in order to build a successful construction company. The book walks you through the steps of creating a working business plan, organizing marketing campaigns, organizing your business, and building a "core" group of employees while protecting your bottom line and achieving financial stability. The material is very easy to get through and doesn't bore you with endless theory on why the concepts work. This may be a slight detraction if you have a technical/ engineering background and like to know theories; however, the author provides plenty of references that elaborate on the information presented.

It should be noted that this book is not meant to be your exclusive resource for building a profitable company, and you should not treat it as such. It does an extremely good job at providing the reader with a solid foundation for which to build their knowledge base. Use it as a reference to get "the gears" turning and then supplement the reading with additional research. I suggest you read the book through to get the "big picture" then go back and review the information while performing the exercises throughout the book.

My favorite aspect of the book is that it requires you to take a critical view of your own abilities and points you in the direction that you need to go in order to fill in those gaps. This is a fairly unique approach which I have not seen in many books.

This book does not go into enough depth or specifics to be useful for someone who really wants to build a successful construction company. It really is a basic primer, more like a high-school text book than a treasure trove of knowledge.

This book fills a significant gap in the construction management literature. We struggled for many years to find a good textbook for our senior capstone class where the students learn how to structure a construction business. The book is critical for graduate students who are also seeking to understand the business side of construction, in the US. The writing flows so well that reading is an enjoyable learning experience. With such a dynamic industry, I hope the author will consider this a beginning edition, with revised editions to come. A must have in the bookshelf of any professor of Construction Management in the US, and worldwide too!

I am currently in the process of starting a construction business, and thought I would try and find a book that gave some good specific information regarding construction startups. This book was very disappointing to me from the beginning, as it is so general it could be written about any business, and was mainly full of cliches and generalizations that didn't help at all.

FYI -- For those reviewers who deemed the book to be a "high school primer" and too general, read again. Since it was published in 2006, Building a Successful Construction Company has been used every year as the main classroom textbook by leading graduate construction management programs in major universities, including NYU and Michigan State.

Tricia Atallah
Author

Mr. Berman's review tells me that he did not read my book. Most would agree with me that he is doing a great diservice to contractors who could
benefit from reading it.

Tricia Atallah