The 13-Step Construction Business Improvement System is the framework Rachelle Hare and Shannon Drew use to work a construction business turning over $5M to $100M+ across 13 categories, from cash flow and business structure through to bid strategy and Owner succession. The System runs in three phases, Stabilise, Improve and Scale, and starts with a four-week Construction Business Improvement Audit.
Rachelle and Shannon work closely together across the different steps. Rachelle helps with your contracts, the commercial position, the governance and the compliance. Shannon works the cash, the costing, the pricing and the reporting. Neither of them hands your business to anybody else once the work starts.
Construction Businesses turning over $5M to $100M+At Blaze Business & Legal, we see three patterns more than any others.
You are trading at $40M on a company structure, a reporting pack and a set of contract templates put together when the business turned over $8M. Most Owners crossed that line two or three years before they rang us.
Brisbane 2032 work, a move from Tier 3 to Tier 2, a sale, or handing the business to your children. A buyer, a bank or a Tier 1 Principal will read your accounts, your QBCC licence and your contracts properly before they commit to you.
Cash is short and the numbers are weeks behind. You need the problems named and ranked before you can choose which one to spend money on first.
Every finding from the Audit is ranked against one of three phases on our Audit Scorecard, which is how you end up with a list in the order it should be worked.
Money leaving the business this month, and personal exposure you and your fellow Directors have signed up to. A QBCC licence held in the wrong entity, or a guarantee nobody has read since 2016, is Stabilise work.
The commercial function, the financial function, the people and the compliance systems, rebuilt for the revenue you turn over now. Most of what we find here was set up for a business half the size.
Bidding for larger Projects, moving up a tier, or handing over to the next Owner with the value in the business intact.
A full page for each step is being written now. Ring us in the meantime and we will talk you through whichever one matters to you today.
A four-week Construction Business Improvement Audit across all 13 categories, delivered as your Audit Report with the Audit Scorecard and your Recommendations.
A written 12-month Implementation Plan, built alongside meetings with the head of each Division and work area inside the business.
A rolling 13-week cash flow forecast, plus an honest answer on whether the management accounts you are deciding from are current enough to decide from.
Whether your plant, your property and your cash are held in the same entity that signs your contracts, and whether your QBCC licence is held where it should be.
Every personal guarantee you have signed, added up on one page, plus your exposure as a Director under the Corporations Act and the WHS Act.
Time bars and notice obligations being missed on live Projects, and proposals leaving your office with no departures and no assumptions attached to them.
Who is authorised to sign what, up to what value, and where decisions are being made with nothing written down afterwards.
How you price risk into a tender, how you buy from your supply chain, and the rights under security of payment legislation your business holds and does not use.
What your reporting is not telling you, and whether your overhead is being recovered against the work you are winning now.
What stops if a key person leaves, what happens if you take a fortnight off, and whether your Divisions work with each other or around each other.
Your QBCC obligations including Minimum Financial Requirements, your Project Trust Account position, your compliance systems, and the gap between the WHS policy in the folder and what happens on site.
Your win rate over the last 12 months, the pattern in the jobs you lost, and whether the work you are chasing suits the business you have.
A written plan for your exit, whether that is a trade sale, a management buyout or your children. Most Owners we do this with have no intention of going anywhere for years.
Four weeks, across all 13 categories, with every finding ranked in the order it should be worked. Fixed price quoted in writing before anything starts, and Rachelle and Shannon on your business the whole way through.
Everybody starts at the Construction Business Improvement Audit. Over four weeks Rachelle and Shannon work the business across all 13 categories, rank every finding on the Audit Scorecard, and hand you an Audit Report with the Recommendations to Stabilise, Improve and Scale your Construction Business at the front of it. Pricing starts at $11,500 plus GST, tiered by the complexity of the business.
The Audit stands on its own. Take the Report and work through the Recommendations with your own people if that suits you, which is what plenty of Owners do. Owners who want us to keep going move into Step 2, a written 12-month Implementation Plan built alongside meetings with the head of each Division and work area.
Want to see how we work before spending $11,500? A Construction Business Issue Review at $1,997 plus GST answers one problem and gives you a document you can take to your Board. Our Construction Business Assessment is free and gives you a read across all 13 categories.
How much of the work we do is your call. Every step has a fixed fee quoted in writing before it starts.
Your people do the implementing and we work alongside them. Your Commercial Manager runs the new contracting process, your finance person runs the forecast, and both of them know how it works after we stop coming in.
Rachelle and Shannon do the work themselves, as External Commercial Manager, External General Counsel and External CFO, on a monthly retainer. Owners use this where the business needs the seniority and cannot yet justify the salary.
You will know the scope and the cost of every step before you commit to it.
Both of them work on your business, and no junior does any of the substantive work.
Construction Lawyer, Commercial Manager and Business Adviser
Acting General Counsel at Thiess, Senior Legal Counsel at Laing O’Rourke and Acciona, plus work with Defence Housing Australia, UGL and Golding. Top-tier private practice at Corrs Chambers Westgarth and McCullough Robertson. Six years as a Commercial Manager with Defence and a Tier 2 Construction and Technology Provider.
Rachelle takes the contracting, commercial, governance and compliance steps.
Management Accountant, Fractional CFO and Business Adviser
25+ years in the construction industry, inside and alongside Construction Businesses of every size, from small trade contractors through to large head contractors. Project profitability and cost analysis, overhead recovery, pricing strategy, cash flow modelling, WIP reporting and financial modelling.
Shannon works the cash, costing, pricing and reporting steps.
The Audit takes four weeks and Step 2 usually runs into Month 2. From there the Implementation Plan sequences Steps 3 to 13 across the following year. How fast that goes depends on how much of the work you want us doing and what your Projects will allow. We build the Plan around your Project commitments.
You can stop at the end of any step, and every step leaves you with something you keep and can use without us. Most Owners do the Audit and the Implementation Plan, then pick which of the remaining steps to run and in what order, working off the priority order in their Executive Summary.
The Audit starts at $11,500 plus GST for a business turning over $5M to $30M, $19,500 plus GST from $30M to $75M, and $32,500 plus GST from $75M to $100M. Anything above $100M is quoted on application. Steps 2 to 13 get scoped and priced during Step 2, each as a fixed fee agreed in writing beforehand.
We work with Construction Businesses turning over $5M to $100M+, and the 13 categories are the same at both ends of that range. The difference shows up in the Recommendations. An Owner-led business at $8M gets a very different top three from a Board-led business at $80M.
The Audit comes first, because it is what tells us where the money and the risk are. One exception is worth knowing about. Owners who already know which problem they want solved often start with a Construction Business Issue Review, which works that one problem on its own for $1,997 plus GST.
Rachelle Hare and Shannon Drew do the work themselves on every step. Both have 25+ years inside the construction industry and have worked with more than 2,000 Construction Businesses between them. No junior does any of the substantive work.
Ring Rachelle and Shannon on (07) 3063 3373 and describe it the way you would to another Owner. The Construction Business Improvement Audit takes four weeks, covers all 13 categories, and has a fixed price quoted in writing before anything starts.
