The construction industry doesn’t need more sustainability programmes; it needs better operations, writes Brittnay Harris, CEO and co-founder of QFlow
In an industry where profit margins typically hover around a mere 2%-3%, construction companies cannot afford to overlook any opportunity to improve their bottom line. Yet many are missing the most significant opportunity right in front of them: operational excellence.
Forget sustainability initiatives for a moment. The fastest, most scalable way to improve both profits and environmental performance isn’t another green programme, it’s better management of materials, waste and data.
The true cost of operational inefficiency
Poor waste and materials management is silently draining profits across the construction sector.
Our analysis reveals a sobering reality: 95% of delivery tickets and 75% of waste records are incomplete or inaccurate. This mismanaged data leads to an estimated £14bn loss annually in the UK and $1.84 trillion globally.
When you consider that materials account for 40% of project budgets and 90% of industry embodied carbon emissions, the scale of this problem becomes clear.
These inefficiencies create a cascade of financial losses that few companies fully quantify. The direct costs are obvious: skip hire and landfill fees, overpaying for materials due to inaccurate quantity tracking, and invoice reconciliation errors from poor documentation.
Yet the hidden costs are even more damaging. When incorrect materials are used, rework costs typically run three to five times the original installation price.
Compliance issues with waste documentation cause programme delays that ripple through the entire project timeline. Administrative inefficiency forces site teams to spend up to 80% of their time on unnecessary paperwork rather than productive work.
Excess or incorrect materials occupy valuable storage space, while poor planning or incorrect deliveries increase labour and equipment costs substantially.
Operational excellence: The profit and carbon solution
Operational excellence, defined as delivering quality, cost…eliminating rework, waste and guesswork through accurate, real-time data, addresses both profit leakage and carbon emissions simultaneously. When you have the right materials in the right place at the right time in the correct quantities, you naturally reduce both costs and carbon.
This isn’t about sustainability for sustainability’s sake. It’s about running a tighter, more profitable operation that happens to have significant environmental benefits.
The reality is that many sustainability initiatives are the first to be cut when “value engineering” kicks in. By focusing instead on operational excellence, companies can achieve sustainability goals through the back door by simply doing things right the first time.
The data-driven approach to operational excellence
To ensure operational excellence, site teams have a lot of plates to spin.
In addition to managing the team and construction itself, they need the right materials on site that have been verified to meet design-approved quality and supplier standards.
These materials must also be delivered at the right time, aligned to project schedules and programme requirements, as well as being supplied in the correct quantities.
Procurement, delivery and invoice records must also match perfectly, and materials must be installed correctly and documented by location, fit, layering and sequencing. To put it simply: when done manually, it’s hard work. And there is a lot of room for error.
However, implementing robust data capture and analysis systems can transform how materials and waste are managed. Improved waste stream visibility enables better facility selection, reducing disposal costs significantly and automated data capture eliminates administrative overheads, with some projects saving thousands of pounds in administration costs alone.
And today’s tech makes this easy. Real-time notifications for non-compliant materials can help to prevent costly errors before they occur, avoiding the substantial expense of rework and delays.
Similarly, tools like streamlined invoice reconciliation improve supplier relationships and cash flow, while local material sourcing identification reduces both transport costs and associated emissions, almost accidentally.
Competitive advantage through better operations
Companies that embrace technology to master operational excellence gain significant advantages in the marketplace. More accurate bidding becomes possible when you have precise waste and materials data that enables sharper cost estimations to maintain profitability and better supplier negotiations result from having detailed usage data that strengthens your position.
In a competitive market, client differentiation is increasingly important in tender processes and demonstrating operational efficiency can be the deciding factor. Robust documentation systems provide clients with compliance assurance and proof of active measures that will prevent penalties, minimise delays and reduce administrative burdens that can erode already thin margins.
Internally, intelligent systems and workflows bring together quality, finance and logistics in real-time. This ensures that sustainability teams can focus on low-carbon innovation, certification and supply chain transformation, while quality and finance teams can operate efficiently, with immediate access to the resources they need to ensure that projects run effectively and to budget.
The bottom line
The construction industry doesn’t need more sustainability programmes; it needs better operations. By focusing on eliminating waste, rework and guesswork through improved data management, companies can simultaneously address their profit challenges and reduce their environmental impact.
Digital data capture and a focus on the quality of documentation has the power to transform waste management from a compliance headache into a profit-generating function. It improves material management and reduces waste, saving money, mitigating risk and improving delivery certainty in almost an instant.
The symbiotic relationship between operations and sustainability means that automating material and waste data capture at the point of origin results in higher efficiencies, reduced cost, guaranteed compliance and reduced carbon cost too – without even having to think about it.
And in today’s competitive market, operational excellence isn’t just nice to have, it’s essential for financial survival and environmental performance.
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