He had already engaged the services of Diane Gilson, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based consultant and accountant, who revamped his accounting system. He became more adept at using Quick-Books, started work-in-progress reports, and was more thorough about cost tracking and labor burden calculations. He sent his bookkeeper to further training. He began to work on getting his CGR designation through the NAHB, which he completed in 2006.
But, he says, the biggest thing he did to get serious was to join Business Networks, a peer review group. “It’s been a huge gain for me,” Zachman says. “It takes you from 0 to 100 in getting up to speed on forms, contracts, employee handbooks, shared resources. I work with other peer members [learning about] systems they’ve built.”
Zachman admits that one of his main challenges is discipline. Joining the peer group has forced him to state his goals. The group holds him accountable for his actions — or non-actions. “There’s no way to ignore the goals,” he says. “The group always knows when you’re blowing smoke.” Recent goals include doing job autopsies and daily time reporting, developing a design/build contract and a construction agreement, and creating an employee handbook. All of these have been implemented.
A business plan and budgeting will be part of Zachman’s next set of goals, and he will be sending his three carpenters to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry for lead carpenter training. He’s also aware that he is typecast as a deck builder and needs to revamp marketing, which has been mostly word-of-mouth. While he has done projects for nearly 1,500 deck and outdoor living spaces customers over the years, and has a ready-built database, most don’t know his remodeling capabilities. “To change the public identity, we may need to change the name to Boardwalk Design Build,” he says, and to let people know we do historic renovation, outdoor living, porches and decks, and full-service design/build.
“I always feel like it’s all just at the end of my fingertips,” Zachman says. “Right now, the phone rings without me doing much advertising. I’m in a nice little village. I have a good clientele. Everything is here for me to move in a positive direction. I need to go out and gain more knowledge to make it happen.”
IMPLEMENTING SYSTEMS W. Stuart Feldt, owner, W.S. Feldt General Contractor, Seattle
Owner’s domain: production management, sales, estimating, marketing
Office: 1; field: 5
Volume: $1.2 million
What concerns Stuart Feldt, owner of W.S. Feldt General Contractor in Seattle, after 14 years in business is systems. “Designing a system is easy,” he says. “Getting it in place and implementing it is challenging.”
Although Feldt studied chemistry in college, his interest in construction started when his parents built their family home in 1979. His initial interest never waned and he decided to work for a contractor after graduating from college. He learned carpentry and the design process, then practiced on his own by buying houses with his parents as investors, renovating them, and selling them. Now the company comprises seven people and includes a cabinet shop.
To identify where a system might be needed, Feldt holds weekly meetings at which the staff discuss potential problems and sticking points. “We ask if we can implement a companywide system to alleviate the problems.” The staff put together a list with potential systems that might work, and gradually, over a month of Monday morning meetings, they’ll come up with a set of procedures. “By the end of the month we can have the system in place,” Feldt says. “[We don’t implement] every system all at once, just things here and there for continual improvement.”
For example, two years ago he decided to put together a jobsite notebook. Feldt was the lead carpenter then, and he says that the specifics of each job were not readily available at each jobsite. Once Feldt hired a lead carpenter and he was no longer around to oversee everything, he implemented the notebook, which includes plans, schedules, specs, and estimates for labor and materials. There are also labor hours so the lead carpenter knows his costs and how many hours he has. “It’s basically open-book for the lead and the client,” Feldt says. Using the notebook, the lead carpenter meets with Feldt on a weekly basis at the jobsite to review schedule, budget, and labor hours. The reports are filed in the notebook and left on site for the customer to see.
Implementing use of the jobsite notebook wasn’t too difficult because everyone knew it would make communication easier. Because of the information in the book, the “staff has taken more ownership of the jobs,” Feldt says. “They’re more likely to ask why a job notebook isn’t complete than to ask ‘Why do we have to do this?’”
Stuart often looks to consultant Tim Faller for instruction on how to get buy-in as the company develops systems. He says he also has learned a lot from watching his parents, each of whom owned a business, as well as reading trade publications and working with other consultants. And, he says, “I believe that letting people know we value them [is important for buy-in].
“Soliciting input from employees to help identify areas of the company that require improvement and to get advice about how to structure new solutions is a sure way to get their buy-in,” he says. “And I’ve heard from [employees] that they like working here. We have full benefits, job bonuses for leads, companywide profit sharing, and we offer training.”
Most of the work the company does — everything from putting in crown molding to whole-house renovation — is done on a time-and-materials basis. At a recent meeting, the staff identified the current change order system as an issue. “Even though we do T and M,” says Feldt, “a change order is still a good idea to let the customer know how the process is going and to help them decide if they want to go ahead with the proposed change.” The company had a clunky system in which all of the information went back to the office. Now Feldt feels more comfortable having the field come up with an estimate that the client can sign, and then formalizing it in the office.
They are also focusing on lead tracking and the company’s overall communications process. “Everyone has e-mail and a cell phone. All the leads have laptops,” he says.
Feldt’s ultimate goal is to create an exit strategy so the business can run without him. “I’d like to spend more time with my wife and two children and go from 50 hours a week to 40 and on down to maybe 20 to 30 hours,” he says. “I also want to be able to take a long vacation and not feel like things are going sideways.”