Articles

All of our senior consultants write a variety of articles each month for our clients, our newsletter and various trade magazines.  Some of these have been archived here.  Signup for our newsletter.

White Papers - The Infrastructure Series

Your daily strategy/tactics, the business you are in, what you do and how you do it, how you serve your customers is the readily visible part of your business.

The underlying processes that support your strategy are not as visible and therefore not regularly focused on.

Much like a building's infrastructure if the underlying foundation is weak in any way it will compromise the whole structure.

D. Brown Management is dedicated to making sure this does not happen. This whitepaper series is a constant work-in-progress and designed to help with the understanding and building of stronger business infrastructure.

Project Design & Management

After 9/11 we led a team of contractors and integrators who designed and built one of the first and largest wireless security projects to protect nine bay area bridges and tunnels, later using that experience to value engineer $5m out of the Port of Oakland.

In an effort to share information about the lessons we learned, techniques we used and management processes we followed to not only design and install these complicated systems but to also save millions of dollars we developed a website, training presentation and whitepaper.

Conference Summaries

With everyone's busy schedules it isn't always possible to attend the industry conferences and stay up-to-date on the latest trends and technologies; especially those that are outside your primary industry. When we attend these conferences we provide a summary to help you digest the important facts quickly.

More Infrastructure Series Coming Soon

Alignment - Improving Business Results By Aligning Customers & Systems

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This paper builds on the Business Plans for Small and Medium Sized Contractors by expanding the discussion of aligning all the systems, people and processes in your organization with your customers, markets and potential markets. When companies start out they are small and focused by nature. As they grow they often develop systems and departments that don't have any clear alignment with the customer and the bottom line is that a business has to exist to serve a customer. Only when the IT systems, accounting systems, organizational structure, compensation systems, support departments and planning are completely aligned with customers will the business be able to reach peak performance.

9 Steps to Building a Solid Business Foundation

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This paper builds on the Business Plans for Small and Medium Sized Contractors by expanding the discussion of what is required to build a solid foundation in an organization that can sustain profitable growth. Too many people want to jump right into the revenue game which may lead to a good year here or there but typically just creates a lot of stress, turnover and very little increased profit. It is only by building a solid foundation that you can build a big house.

Leadership Decisions - Consensus, Communication & Schedules

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Whether you are leading a project as a foreman or running a company the most important thing a leader does beyond setting the right course is to make the right key decisions while building as much consensus as possible and then communicating those decisions effectively so everyone can execute and stay on schedule. This is a tough balancing act and everyone has different philosophies on how to manage this. In this paper I outline my approach, both the positives and negatives.

What DNA Can Do For Your Business

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The amazing thing about DNA is that it puts the blueprints for our entire body in each of the trillions of cells that make up our body. Each cell knows exactly what the whole body looks like, what every other cell does and what role it plays as part of the entire system. Because each cell has this information the incredibly complex systems that make up our bodies run by themselves, adapt rapidly to changing conditions and even know when they aren't running correctly and take appropriate actions automatically to start fixing the problem.

What does this have do do with your business? Well, the only way to really build a business for the long-term that can grow, adapt and sustain itself is to embed the DNA of that business in every person. The downside is that this is very hard and will take a long time. The upside is that no business is nearly as complicated as the human body and the rewards for working in this direction will show up almost immediately regardless of whether you actually get your DNA embedded in every employee.

Contractor IT System Applications

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This is a paper similar to the one above but focused on the applications that are necessary to run and grow a contracting business including office applications, scheduling software, intranets, remote access, accounting packages and document management.

Construction Accounting Basics - Lessons From The Service Van

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This is my current pet project. I believe that financial education in the construction industry is lacking and that improving this process will provide everyone a better understanding of the intense pressures a contractor faces every day from cash flow, profitability, backlog, ever-increasing insurance costs, etc. This is designed as a workbook that follows a guy as he starts his own contracting business and grows it over a three year period of time. The workbook traces the business through good times and bad and prompting the reader to interact with the basic financial statements. This will be offered as a stand-alone workbook and as part of a training program.