Construction Consulting and Accounting Services

Job Costing and Profitability Benchmarks Help Measure Your Success.

What's unique about the construction industry is the risks and demands associated with economic upturns and downturns. Because projects have longer timeframes, the impacts are not felt immediately but require planning to prepare your business for an increase or decrease in future projects. This can be a daunting task.

General contractors, subcontractors, and home builders should all focus on forecasts and projections, emphasizing the inherent risks for the business.

What Should You Be Focused On?

Financial Outlook

Price increases, combined with supply and labor shortages, are the biggest challenges for the industry.

Be diligent in reviewing your budgets, forecasts, and projections continually
Attract and retain key staff with a combined approach of compensation models and critical benefits
Develop a plan to ensure future projects by pursuing work in growing sectors

Project Management

Accurate estimates and project management tools will help you improve your operations.

Invest in technology to help you document and track costs, which will give you a clear picture of your projects' profitability and help you with accurate estimating in the future
Review past projects to determine operational changes to implement in the future

Contract Risks

Understanding contract penalties and performance obligations will help you manage your unexpected costs and challenges.

Creating a competitive, yet profitable bid process requires accurate tracking of costs for each project. With that information, you can more accurately estimate costs for future projects which will help you plan for unexpected costs that might create risks in managing the contract.

Tax Strategies

Understanding the federal, state, and local tax incentives and obligations will help you minimize taxes and maximize your profits.

Develop a comprehensive tax strategy with an advisor who has construction industry expertise
Proactively plan for sales and use tax obligations, especially if you sell services in more than one state

Specialized Industry Services

Business professionals need easy access to information to make timely decisions. SVA has what you need, when you need it. Choose a topic below or just contact us directly. Our expertise is ready anytime you need it.

Construction projects are among the largest and most complex financial investments undertaken by owners. Billing errors, overcharges, and unauthorized expenditures can leave an owner paying thousands of dollars in additional costs.

We can help reduce the risk of being overcharged by applying specific procedures in a Construction Contract Compliance Analysis (CCCA). Throughout the contract, we conduct the CCCA to help reduce the risk of contract non-compliance during each phase of your project.

Tax Incentives and Credits

Construction projects qualify for many federal, state, and local tax incentives. A comprehensive state and local tax strategy helps minimize your company's compliance risk and tax burden. Staying current and compliant with federal tax incentives will help you control your costs.

We work closely with you to identify and implement strategies that bring you the maximum tax benefit and leverage our years of experience to deliver tailored solutions that consider the full spectrum of tax credits available.

Tax Accounting Methods Analysis

SVA can help you manage your tax liability by choosing an appropriate accounting method or changing methods or sub-methods. With recent tax legislation such as TCJA, there are more benefits to certain accounting methods making a review of your current options imperative.

Large contractors that use the Percentage of Completion Method (PCM) could defer income by making certain elections or adopting certain sub-methods. For instance, a general contractor that has substantial retainage payables may be able to exclude the retainage payable amount from costs incurred, when calculating the percentage is complete.

SVA can review your current accounting method and make recommendations to help you use the best option for your specific business.

Using software that is designed to support the tracking of costs is imperative to accurate financial reporting. SVA works with several software options and can make recommendations on which is the best fit for your company.

Once you have the right software, creating customized on-demand reports will allow you to monitor your estimates compared to actual expenses, as well as track overhead allocations by the project.

BIZ TIP: 6 Job Costing Strategies for Construction Companies to Reduce Risk

Construction bonds protect against financial loss due to a contractor’s failure to meet or complete a specific contract. SVA will help you determine how your financial statements impact your bonding capacity. We can develop metrics to help you monitor and manage your bonding capacity. We also provide education to bonding agents and underwriters, so they better understand your individual business.