Recently I was chatting with a builder and a lawyer friends. The...

Recently I was chatting with a builder and a lawyer friends. The builder was lamenting that fixed price contracts are no longer viable - as recently many builders found themselves in trouble because of the rapid rise of cost of materials.

Also the suppliers and trades now have shortened their terms of trade, some requesting deposits.

It was clear that saving a few weeks in the build time, and the ability to schedule accurately the various trades and supplies would remove some risk of prices changing during the build.

And of course finishing earlier means the builder gets paid earlier, saving interest on building finance, and the builder can move on to the next project and utilise his capital equipment more efficiently, effectively improving his ROE (check with Woolies about that).

So, overall, there are additional financial efficiencies.