Jeff and Bob Jertberg, owners of VanBerg Construction (the company working on the Schick project), also establish communication patterns early. They create a binder full of pertinent information for the project manager before the pre-construction meeting. The project manager reviews the binder with the salesperson. A week before the project begins, at the pre-construction meeting with the client, “there’s a psychic and physical handoff from sales to production,” Jeff says. The client feels part of the process, that they’ve been in good hands and will continue to be in good hands.
To put his clients at ease, John DeCiantis, owner of DeCiantis Construction, in Stonington, Conn., gives clients a humorous booklet on how to survive their remodeling project. He also goes over a graph called “the emotional state of the homeowner.” “They’re a little surprised at first,” he says, “but they soon get it.”
A calender is a great visual tool that’s at the crossroads of communication and scheduling. “Create and share a schedule with clients,” Faller says. “A schedule shows clients that you know the job and have control. It gives them hope of a date the project can realistically be done and shows them there’s a degree of professionalism going into the project.”
Regularly scheduled jobsite meetings are an important way to keep clients informed about schedule changes as well as “what’s happening on the job, who will be there, any difficulties, and pending change orders,” Faller adds.
CLEAN IT UP Although scheduling and communication are important, Faller would add cleanliness to the list. “I might even go so far as to say that the quality of your workmanship may not be as important as the cleanliness at the jobsite.” But although remodelers interviewed for this article all mentioned “clean jobsite” as a way of creating a great experience for the customer, that issue ranks among the lowest on GuildQuality’s 13-question survey. “Even unhappy customers still rated cleanliness very high,” Graham says. He says it’s because remodelers using his service “are a notch above the rest” and keep jobsites clean; hence, it’s not seen as an issue.
There are easy things remodelers can do to minimize dust and debris, says Brindley Byrd, president of Qx2, Inc., a consulting and training company for the construction industry that focuses on helping companies manage particulate hazards present on jobsites.
The main objective should be to keep sites “clean enough for a 3-year-old,” Byrd says. “If a child walked onto a jobsite, [they] shouldn’t be put into an overly hazardous situation. That’s how neat and orderly the site should be.” (Visit www.remodelingmag.com/webextras for Byrd’s 10 suggestions on how to accomplish this.)
VanBerg Construction makes job-site cleanliness a priority. “We go over the top on isolation,” Bob Jertberg says. “We build wood frame plywood isolation walls with spray-foam seams. We create as strong a dust barrier as possible. We have locking doors to create a sense of security as well as a sense of cleanliness. It has a huge impact.”
DeCiantis uses a product called ZipWall ( www.protectiveproducts.com), a spring-loaded pole that connects to plastic sheeting. “With it we can create a protective barrier in 15 minutes,” says DeCiantis, whose crew also does a 100% dust-free remodel using negative pressure, air filters, and dust walls.