Construction Contracting Academy
1-800-937-2242
info@Contracting-Academy.com
Champion of Independent Construction Contractors
Links To My Favorite Sites
General
National Association of the Remodeling Industry (NARI)
This site provides sources for those interested in being a remodeling contractor. Many larger cities have local chapters.
National Association of Home Builders
This site will help those contractors interested in home building including all of the supporting trade contractors.
Associated General Contractors
This site provides information for contractors who intend to work in commercial and public works projects. These are the bigger contractors working on the bigger projects.
American Subcontractors Association
This site focuses on those contractors that work with and for commercial and public works general contractors. This group provides many services that protect trade contractors from problems in dealing with general contractors.
National association of Women in Construction (NAWIC)
This site serves those women interested in contracting. It is a wealth of information about careers and opportunities in contracting.
Small Business Administration (SBA)
This site provides information about many general business topics. They sponsor Small Business Development Centers in many community colleges where they usually offer free business counseling. You will also find out about the SCORE program (Senior Corps of Retired Executives), which also offers free business counseling in lots of cities. Spend some time at this site because it has useful information.
American Express
www.americanexpress.com/homepage/smallbusiness.shtml
This is a commercial site but their small business area is useful and updated regularly, and they are not aggressive to deal with.
Federal Government
This is a general federal government site with links to most of the agencies you will be dealing with as a contractor. Check out their business link.
Safety
SmartBiz
This site will try to sell you everything, but if you stick with it you can find lots of good information on general business topics.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration OSHA
This is the federal OSHA site. You can search for any information you might be interested in. It is an extensive site and worth the time to explore it.
The OSHA Construction Resource Manual
http://www.osha-slc.gov/Publications/Const_Res_Man/
This site provides you with the complete Resource Manual relating to construction. In it you will find all of the rules and regulation that your contracting company operates under. Remember that OSHA publishes pamphlets on common compliance issues from this Manual.
Office Administration
Small Business Administration
http://www.sba.gov/starting/indexshareware.html
This site offers a great variety of shareware for business applications. You will have to sort through it a bit but there are some gems.
1,2,3 Sort It
This site offers a wealth of information on organizing, filing techniques, office design and layout plus other good information.
25 Organizing Tips
http://www.frugalfun.com/officeorg.html
This site lists 25 tips for organizing your workspace. Explore many other articles on business issues by going to the “Down to Business” page linked on the column at the right.
15 Principles for Organizing Your Business Life
Sales and Marketing
Knowthis.com
This site has a number of resources for market plans with links to other resources including the Women’s Business Center and the Small Business Administration.
http://www.knowthis.com/general/marketplan.htm
Women’s Business Center
http://www.onlinewbc.org/docs/market/mk_sales_process.html
This site presents another look at a sales process. This article goes into detail about how to set up and follow through to a successful sale. It also deals with customer service as a sales tool.
JustSell.com
http://www.justsell.com/content/content.htm
This site is focused on selling. There are articles and suggestions on all aspects of selling. There are lot of areas of selling you can dig deeper into.
Contracts
Free Advice
http://law.freeadvice.com/general_practice/contract_law/
An extensive list of articles on construction topics as well as many others on general contract law.
Cash Management
Cash Flow – The Pulse of Your Business
http://www.acctsite.com/articles/cashflowdetailed.htm
This site contains a good article on why cash flow is so important to your business.
Project Scheduling
DMOZ Directory
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Industry-Specific/Construction/Estimating/
A very complete directory of software applications for almost any type of contracting. Foreman Construction Management
http://www.dforeman.com/Scheduling.html
This site presents an article about project scheduling that focuses on the idea of perceived value by the customer. A very good look at how the business of contracting can make a large difference in how a customer “sees” the value of the project to them.
Red Bird Corporation
http://www.redbirdcorp.com/redbirdproject/construction__architecture.htm
This site presents a sample of a CPM schedule. Click on “Master Schedule.” It is a complex schedule but shows why CPM can sort out all aspects of a project.
Employee and Independent Contractor
FindLaw.com
This site provides you with a searchable database of articles. Search for “independent contractor” and “employees” to find a variety of articles that go deeper into these issues.
