In the construction world (and it’s said in other industries as well), we always talk about the three-legged stool: cost, quality and time. A project is a function of the three, and typically people think that you can have two of the three. For example, you can have the project done cheaper and faster, but your quality will suffer. Or you can have great quality and low cost, but it will take you forever to finish the project.
I think that is completely false.
You can always find more money (although you may not want to), and you can always redo quality (although you may not want to), but you will never get back time (even if you want to). If your scope of work is estimated to take a thousand man hours and you put 100 people on it, it will not be done in 10 hours. It just doesn’t work that way. Time is always of the essence, and that’s what everything boils down to, not dollars and quality. Of course, that’s not to say that quality or cost isn’t important, but time is the most important portion of a job.
At the end of the day, the faster a job gets done, the less overhead the project will have for the General Contractor, and they will possibly make more profit. From the owner’s point of view, the faster the project’s done, the faster they can get their project to market and realize whatever return was most important for that project, whether that means opening the doors of a retail shop or opening an office building up for tenants to start leasing. From the subcontractor’s point of view, they can get onto the next job.