All construction has just one thing in common; it’s all supposed to get paid for. Despite rarely making any list of the biggest problems faced in construction, inefficient payment movement on projects has dragged the construction segment to the bottom of world rankings for access to working capital, length of receivables and available trade credit. And they say there’s no sign of future improvement.
Construction funders intend and expect that their project funds distributions will cascade expeditiously down through the project payment chain for all properly approved work and materials. But providers of oversight, work and materials know that getting paid is rarely as simple as expected and that the funder has little or no actual presence to enforce their intentions for expeditious payment releases throughout the project payment chain.
Without the influential presence of funders, properly controlled payment to providers’ serpentines slowly down through the project payment chain players, winding around payment laws, mistimed draw schedules, manual processes, upstream defaults, trade credit limits, retainages, liens, apparent US Postal delivery issues, bad actors and many more potential hazards. Any potential purchasing presence funders had at the top of the payment chain is unrealized, forever held back as potential. Everyone loses.
Unnecessary payment friction is factored into all the payment chain bids on each project, along with perceived payment reputations, risk, current receivables and other intangibles. Financial technology is capable of properly controlling and freeing construction funders potential purchasing presence as intended, without unnecessary friction. By supplanting manual, fragmented and outdated processes with efficient financial technology, projects can be delivered faster, cheaper and much more transparently. Everyone wins.