How to grow a construction company

Growing a construction business

It goes without saying that running your own business can be both a challenging and rewarding task. For the next step, even for sole traders, you’ll need to know how to grow a construction company.

However, growing a construction business comes with its own set of challenges.

From where to focus your growth plan to what construction apps to use to make your work easier, there’s a lot to consider. Which is exactly why we’ve created this guide!

While you’re looking, why not read the story of Checkatrade member Mike, founder of Green Hawk Construction, for his unique perspective?

How to expand your construction company

With expansion on the horizon for your construction company, there are several business areas you’ll need to look at. Not only that but what’s required for construction businesses to grow will be different for each one.

Generally speaking, your construction business will likely benefit from one area of consideration more than the others.

However, we still recommend looking into all of the following aspects when growing a construction business:

1. Growing your team – Building your staff could mean recruiting new employees, apprentices, or subcontractors
2. Focusing on specific types of work – Your company could focus on certain aspects of construction, rather than all
3. Covering a larger service area – All businesses can reach more customers by reaching wider to find more people
4. Increasing revenue – Boosting the amount of leads you generate and jobs you win also impacts business growth

Before thinking about growing your business, you need to be sure you can handle it.

This means making sure you can accommodate the increased demands of jobs, without sacrificing other areas of your business.

A business needs to run smoothly if it’s to expand in the future. So, be sure that all areas of your business are working properly together before looking to grow.

Business development for construction companies

Now that you know the key spots you should look at when growing a construction company, let’s look in a bit more depth at each.

After all, your construction business can’t grow in these areas if you don’t know what’s needed.

Once you’ve streamlined your business, built a strong financial basis, and kept producing quality work, you’re in a good position to move to the next step.

Here are our top tips to grow your construction business:

1. Growing your construction team

To take on more work and generate more revenue, chances are you’re going to need to grow your team. But while this might seem an intimidating idea if you’ve never managed anyone, it doesn’t have to be.

In fact, building a bigger team can be one of the greatest steps for growing your construction business.

From taking on larger projects to acquiring skilled individuals to help you specialise, the benefits aren’t to be missed.

Here are our top tips for how to expand your construction company team:

• Hire good people – a generic statement but one that’s worth raising time and again. Always make sure you hire the right person for the role and your business. Carry out thorough interviews to assess their skills and give them a trial period to see their competency and if you get on with them personally
• Start with subcontractors – if you don’t think you’re ready to take staff on directly, then making use of qualified subcontractors is a great choice instead. Not only will they have the experience you’re looking for, but if things go well, you’ll have industry contacts you can turn to again for future projects
• Take on apprentices – all new tradespeople need to start somewhere. Taking the time to help apprentices learn the construction trade can be rewarding in many ways, not to mention the fact that they’re a great way to ease you into hiring full-time employees

Of course, even if you only take on a few new employees, learning the hiring process can be tricky. Why not read our article on how to hire employees for more advice in this area?

2. Focus more on certain types of construction work

By specialising in specific types of building jobs, you could see an increase in demand for your services. For example, training some of your team to become dry liners. Alternatively, niche markets like driveways and eco-friendly building work.

Not only that but by specialising in this way, you can corner the local market. That way, customers have to come to you for that kind of work

Here are some ways you can tap into niche construction work in your area:

• Identify building needs in your area – Do some research into what sort of building needs are in demand in your local area so that your company can fill these gaps
• Invest in specialist building equipment – You can’t do any job without the right tools, so make sure you update your current construction plant to do the work properly
• Look into learning new construction skills – You can also take a look at what construction courses are on offer in your area and consider signing up for those could benefit your business or the skills of your team
• Expand your trade network – Building a strong network of trade contacts is particularly important for finding new domestic and commercial construction opportunities

Naturally, as you go about expanding in these areas, you want to make sure that your business has the right cover. Take a moment to read our piece on construction insurance to see where you might need to protect your business.

3. Cover a larger service area

If you’ve found your local area lacks the required factors for good growth, then you could think about widening your work area.

By offering construction and building services to a larger geographical space, you’re able to reach more potential customers.

Here are our best tips to grow your construction business by expanding outwards:

• Decide where you want to cover – Identify specific locations that you want to cover, such as new neighbourhoods or even another nearby town
• Let your customers know you’re expanding – Word of mouth is such a useful way to get new leads, so by telling your current customers that you’re expanding, they could recommend you to friends and family in your new area
• Update your online advertising – Be sure to update your Facebook, physical ads, or Google Ads, so that it’s easier for new customers to find you in your new service area

And speaking of advertising, make sure to read our guide on construction marketing to learn all about how to do this properly!

4. Increase your revenue

Okay, this last one is an obvious point. All businesses want to increase their revenue, and revenue is a key factor in growth.

Of course, to grow your revenue, you need to pull in more leads.

Here are our best ideas for how to expand a construction company with greater revenue:

• Marketing and advertising – Advertising is a great way to find new clients, and new clients mean new leads, meaning investing in both physical and digital marketing to reach the widest customer base possible
• Encourage reviews – Few things do wonders for increasing business revenue than a good review, so always remember to ask your existing customers to help enhance your reputation
• Deliver quality work – Whatever area of construction you work in, your business should always be working to the highest standards, to help you earn more repeat customers and new business

Looking for more help in this area? Why not read our guides on lead generation and winning new business? They have plenty of useful information to help you in this area.

How do you attract construction customers?

All of the methods we’ve mentioned above are great ways to attract new construction customers. However, these are certainly areas you should place your focus on.

• Marketing
• Advertising
• Quality work
• Great customer service

For any business to succeed in the modern day, it’s essential to have a solid marketing strategy. We go into great detail on how to market your construction company in our growth and marketing guides.

Of course, you can also find plenty of new customers when you sign up to Checkatrade.

As a checked and vetted member, you’ll easily be able to find new clients in need of construction work.

Growing a construction business successfully with Checkatrade

And there you have it; you should now have plenty of tips to get started on growing your construction business. But did you know that you can make this even easier with Checkatrade?

Signing up to Checkatrade is one of the easiest ways to get your business discovered by potential customers.

Helping people with their homes for over 25 years, we’re the home of quality tradespeople, where you can:

• Showcase your work with photos of recent jobs
• Highlight business credentials
• Utilise customer testimonials
• Save on a range of business essentials through exclusive offers and discounts
• Get money off your public liability insurance
• Use of dedicated trades app for profile management, job management and quoting/invoicing

Get in touch with our team today to learn more about our vetting process and signing up.