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Contractor, Businessman

by Larry Rayburn, Vice President; Richard Goettle, Inc., 12071 Hamilton Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45231,


Serial Information: Civil Engineering—ASCE, 1986, Vol. 56, Issue 7, Pg. 51-53


Document Type: Feature article

Abstract:

The management side of running a construction firm is as important to its survival and growth as the technical activities. This article tells how a Cincinnati geotechnical contractor, Richard Goettle Inc., handles management. The article focuses on sales and cost forecasting and budgeting, job-cost monitoring, monthly budget revisions, the need for skillful management of borrowing to tide the firm over periods of net negative cash flow, and the critiquing of competitors' jobs. Seeking out new profit centers, as traditional markets get overcrowded with competitors is discussed. Also, use of a microcomputer spreadsheet to document upcoming periods of shrinking or expanding business volume, and concomitant need to shrink the work force and borrow money in the first case, and to expand staff and equipment in the second.

Subject Headings: Business management | Contracts and subcontracts | Budgets | Tides | Spreadsheets | Profits | Geotechnical engineering

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