Many Business Owners often wonder what is the importance of a Virtual Construction Assistant and why we should consider bringing them into our organizations.
Here are a few things to consider if you are unsure if you need a Construction Assistant:
- Are you experiencing burnout?
- Is your normal motivation and drive lacking?
- Do you spend hours of your week performing repetitive low-value tasks that you could easily assign to someone else?
- Are you spending nights and weekends always trying to catch up on your to-do lists?
- Does your to-do list always seem to get longer and never get shorter?
If you said ‘yes’ to one or all these questions, then it’s time for you to consider hiring a Virtual Construction Assistant.
IDENTIFY AREAS OF YOUR COMPANY THAT NEED IMPROVEMENT
What is taking up the majority of your time each week? Are there certain repetitive low-value tasks that you can carve out and delegate to others? The million-dollar question you need to ask yourself is “where is my time best served?” If you delegate just one hour of your week to someone else, you just gained 52 extra hours at the end of the year. This is the equivalent of one extra week. For every hour you delegate out you gain back one week of your life to reallocate to something else.
As the President of your organization, is your time best served inputting invoices into QuickBooks or putting together a final proposal? Is your time best spent reviewing drawings and doing a quantity takeoff or meeting with Developers & Architects? Is there anyone in your company reaching out to potential Clients and following up on proposals you recently sent them? Does your company have a social media presence to organically try and attract new potential Clients?
TIP 1: Virtual Construction Assistants allows time back into your life
The majority of the time why Clients are looking for a Construction Virtual Assistant is to get time back within their lives. Virtual Construction Assistants allows Business Owners to delegate tasks out to highly skilled people to take some of the workloads off their shoulders. Owners can then put the focus back on the company’s long-term goals.
These experienced Engineers and Architects who make up the majority of our team of Virtual Construction Assistants provide Clients with a number of added benefits to their organizations for a number of reasons. One such benefit of working remotely is that it opens the pool of talent to a wider audience. Currently, there is an ongoing trend to work from home. The concept of construction and engineering assistants who work from home is actually quite normal, making fulfilling these positions easier. The majority of them have previous experiences working with different construction and engineering firms and they will have no problem with the onboarding and transition process.
TIP 2: Virtual Construction Assistants lowers your operating overhead and saves your company money
Let’s face it running a business, costs a lot of money. By hiring Virtual Construction Assistants, you can leverage where you put your assets and substantially reduce your overhead expenses. Statistically speaking, the cost of hiring a remote staff worker saves a company over 50% versus hiring locally. There is immediately a saving in direct costs.
By hiring Virtual Construction Assistants, you will also save on numerous indirect costs such as office space, computer workstations, electricity, internet, bathroom maintenance, etc. These indirect cost savings are in addition to the direct cost savings.
Tip #3: Hiring construction assistants for repetitive tasks
For Clients that have difficulty handling their workload, important tasks can quickly get overshadowed due to a jam-packed schedule. These are the perfect instances where Virtual Construction Assistants can support you since they can handle various tasks such as:
- Construction Administrative Support
- Email Management
- Estimating Assistance
- Shop Drawing Drafting
- Submittal Coordination
- RFI Management
- Construction Document Control
- Procore Data Entry
- Construction Scheduling
- QuickBooks Accounting
- Digital Marketing
- Social Media Manager
- Construction SEO Manager
- Construction Customer Support
Virtual Construction Assistants help save more funds for the company and allocate to better opportunities
These highly trained experts are skilled in various areas and roles. Virtual Construction Assistants can decrease any work-induced-related burden and can help keep a company organized and well-managed. By doing specific role-related tasks and duties, Management can now focus on other areas of the company. With a proper company organizational chart and with clear job descriptions for each position, each team member has a designated role to play and tasks to complete which keeps the business running smooth and free-flowing
Tip #4: Virtual Construction Assistants provide the required skills you don’t necessarily need to learn
The Construction industry requires an enormous amount of tasks to be performed in order for Contractors to obtain a job, fulfill the job, and then get paid for the job. All of the tasks involved can be daunting and requires continuous commitment and follow-up. As Owners, we try to maintain control and try to do everything ourselves. However, this is practically impossible for anybody who is trying to grow a small business. At some point, you have to assign tasks out to others so you can focus on other things.
Here comes your Construction Virtual Assistant – they can make up for the specific skill gap in your organization. Virtual Construction Assistants are specifically skilled and will provide you with a complete extra skill set. For example, if you’re not equipped with estimating works, a Virtual Construction Assistant experienced with estimating and experienced with onscreen takeoff software like Plan swift and eTakeoff, can accomplish these estimating services on your behalf.
This is one of the perfect reasons why you need these Architects and Engineers – they perform the tasks that might seem difficult and tricky for you, tasks that might take more time to work and study on.
Tip #5: Virtual Construction Assistants help market your brand and increase your social media presence.
Nowadays, with the outpour of different companies and brands out there, it’s hard to distinguish and identify your company. That’s why it’s important to have an active presence on social media, but this requires a lot of time, effort, and persistence.
By having a Construction Virtual Assistant who specializes in this area, they can offer the best help by creating essential things that will help increase the involvement of different potential Clients. They can increase the frequency of posting on your social media and thus you can solidify the identity of your company’s brand. These can be identified into these specific aspects:
- Creating content and engaging online to gain interaction
- Continuous promotion of posts and activities online
- Create and establish a prompt response to any Clients queries
Tip #6: Virtual Assistants are great with handling customer care
Once you’ve created and established the identity of your brand, Clients could come in and have multiple queries at different times and occasions. This could be a very time-consuming task but has an important aspect because this builds your company’s reputation.
Aside from taking Client service calls and inquiries, your Construction Assistant can also focus on getting quotations for different Clients, obtaining billings and estimations from vendors, fixing appointments, and gathering important messages on behalf of the company.
Providing an avenue for building your reputation with your different Clients will create more opportunities to get different potential Clients in the future. A Virtual Construction Assistant helping you specifically on this will lead to widening your company’s reach and your ability to follow up.
Tip #7: Virtual Construction Assistants gives you more free time
Overall, hiring a Virtual Construction Assistant can provide you with a better quality of life. Aside from having time to focus on the company’s long-term vision and other areas of potential growth; as leaders and Business Owners in this fast-paced industry, allowing yourself to take a break and rest can help reset your mind and help refocus your company vision. By putting the right people in place, you are now set up to even greater potential for your company.
This is the perfect support any Virtual Construction Assistant can provide our Client’s, not only for company growth but also for our Client’s personal growth and well-being.