I’m probably the only personal financial blogger who works in the construction industry. It may sound like a strange combination, but it actually makes sense. There are so many financial aspects to construction, it blows my mind.

To give you some background, I currently work for a Fortune 500 general contractor in the heavy civil industry. We work on large scale projects like highways, bridges, and power plants. I graduated college with a degree in Construction Management and love what I do. How many people do you know can say that? Well, I can and I’m proud of it! I love the ability to go out on a project site and then be able to come back indoors. I would hate cubicle life and feel like I’m wired for construction.

To say that the construction industry has revolutionized my personal finances is pretty bold. As bold as it may be, it’s true. I have always had big picture personal finance principles as my foundation, but construction has really taught me a lot about personal finance, some of it from studying long hours in college and some of it from getting my work boots dirty in the field.

Let’s dig our boots in and explore this revolution.

1. Execution without planning will result in failure

You can try to execute, but if you don’t have proper planning, it’s doomed to fail. In construction this happens when someone doesn’t do his job and forgets to plan accordingly. This could be as simple as a missing checklist or as serious as not ordering enough concrete. Another big one is planning for safety. You never want injuries on your job site. If you don’t engineer out the risks of an operation, how can you be confident in your execution?

2. 80/20 rule applies to your finances

I’m a huge believer in the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. I first heard of this rule from a professor in college. The basic idea is that 80% of your results come from 20% of your work. More and more I’m finding this to be true. There are only a handful of decisions that are really going to affect you on a construction job. Things like a concrete pour are extremely critical, whereas a meeting on the door paint may be pushed to another week.

3. Where are you headed without a schedule?

A construction project is 100 percent schedule-driven. Without an organized schedule, how will you know what will be happening the next week? How will you know when to mobilize big equipment? These issues are solved by keeping an in-depth schedule and maintaining it. Most of our meetings on a job site are schedule-related, and there is good reason for that.

4. Know your costs

On a construction project, knowing your costs will make or break your bottom line. Everything down to the office supplies need to be accounted for. Not only is this a good practice for keeping good records, but it ensures that you get paid by the owner. Without a record of your costs, your boat is going to sink and sink fast.

5. Protect your assets

As a general contractor, we own much of our heavy equipment, everything from bulldozers to mobile cranes. Part of the responsibility of owning these pieces of equipment is to protect our assets. We maintain this equipment and always keep the moving parts up to date. A broken bulldozer is useless in the eyes of a general contractor.

Who knew that construction had so many lessons that you could apply to personal finances? I hope you enjoyed this post. Now you know it’s not so crazy to be in construction and love personal finance!

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