Consultants at Work

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Victor Tyler, Founder, President and Principal Engineer of Tyler Construction Engineers, P.C. located in Nashville, Tennessee. He is an author, consultant, and a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Tennessee with more than forty years of engineering, construction, and business experience. His firm provides construction support and construction management training services to the engineering and construction industry. 

Prior to starting his own firm, he held project design, engineering and construction positions at the Tennessee Department of Transportation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and serving as a Technical Program Manager at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Center for Industrial Services. 

Mr. Tyler’s expertise is in the areas of heavy construction engineering, cost estimating, CPM scheduling, and construction management. His many years of progressively responsible experience had afforded him to become an advisor/coach to many small construction contractors and engineering firm owners throughout the southeastern region. He has successfully implemented cost management and pricing programs for contractors in the heavy/highway and infrastructure markets. He continues to provide support solutions for the engineering and construction industry with emphasis on small business firms that improves their bid estimating, equipment costing, indirect cost rates, project cash flows, project management, business competitive advantage, and long term profitability. 

In 2010, he wrote and published the study book “How To Estimate Road Construction Accurately”. The book was specifically written for small contractors in the road building industry. He has also presented many training seminars and workshops on construction business management and cost estimating. He is currently finalizing development of a construction software application (RoadbidTemplates.com) to assist small contractors to accurately capture their costs and competitively bid DOT construction jobs. 

Mr. Tyler is a frequent speaker on leadership in construction and business topics for state highway agencies such as Tennessee Department of Transportation, Alabama Department of Transportation, South Carolian Department of Transportation, and others, local and state small business development and diversity programs, and higher education institutions. 

My current mission is to provide small DOT and DBE subcontractors with a estimating and pricing tool that is affordable, easy to use, and developed by an industry expert that understands the road and infrastructure construction market.   

Below are some of the reasons why we provide business and management consulting services to assist small, minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses in the heavy/highway and infrastructure construction markets.

From many years in the industry, we have repeatedly found small contractors:

1. Do not perform front end planning or lack taking the time to nail down the exact scope of work (SOW) before preparing estimates or schedules.
2. Not fully understanding or reviewing all contract documents of a project.
3. Practicing poor estimating methods that do not capture the specific (SOW) components.
4. Not fully underestimating the scope for project mobilization, job indirect cost, support, and safety requirement costs for a project.
5. Considering only using best case crew productivity expectations within the estimate.
6. Developing overly optimistic schedules that reflect best case conditions (I.e., plans, specs, environment, local jurisdiction, owner temperament, skills availabilities,  etc.).
7. Do not perform early and ongoing risk management methods and systems, throughout a project (business  development, bidding, building, billing and banking) lifecycle.
8. Not utilizing proper project controls (cost, schedule and productivity monitoring) and/ or initiating timely corrective activities during the planning and construction phases.
9. Not utilizing a contracting strategy /or approach to the project process (Our 5B’s to Profits).
10. Utilizing inexperienced management Leadership. (Skills required to supervise, motivate and encourage all project related personnel).
11. Often employing too many or too few management staff to successfully manage a project effort.
12. Not having “seasoned” owner/ management persons to oversee, help and facilitate in steering the project to a successful conclusion.
13. Not understanding the Change Order Process.
14. Not considering contingency and management of reserve funds that can adequately deal with minor field changes.
15. Not fully utilizing or lack of job cost accounting and internal controls.
16. Do not proactively foster communications between all key project members /or the project owner.

Our mission is to assist small businesses with Strategic Business Decision-making, Improving Project Estimates and Schedules, developing and managing better Human Capital Investment Strategies, and understanding our Financial Industry Benchmarking Assessments.