Why Building Fast Creates a Distinct
Competitive Advantage
A JNA White Paper -
Jack Nieporte & Associates Fastrack Consultants - Trainers
A Discussion on the 'Why' Factor
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Taking Business Efficiencies and Effectiveness Up To the top Level in Organizational Practice and Principles of Building Houses, Apartments, Hotels, Food Stores, Banks, Restaurants and all Other Commercial and Light Industrial Building Projects Much Faster Than Industry Standards
Executive Summary
General contractors and builder/developers of all kinds should build much faster than what they are currently building. Faster is better. Here are some of the "Why's" for doing such.
1. Reason's Why An Organization is Sluggish in their Production Output?
2. Why Does the Typical Organization Resist Change?
3. The Skeptic or those from Missouri (The Show Me State)
4. Better Management Strategies: One Man-Organizations
5. Fast Schedules!
6. Doing Things differently for the Better
7. Faster is Better! The True Competitive Advantage
Solutions!
JNA provides solutions for these critical dynamics that offer are either overlooked, ignored or not seen but the company's ownership and/or senior management. Solutions to correct these defects in organizational effectiveness as well as the similar field construction poor performance areas.
Reluctance to Build Faster: Why?
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"It has always seemed to me that the overall construction industry's field practices have been on the 'cutting-edge' of the past...Why is that?" Other large and comparable industries are always ahead of us in the actual use and implementation of exciting new technologies, advanced management practices and principles, as well as the actual industry trends towards progressive and avant garde ideas that have made our country great in the past...
- Jack Nieporte, April 1991
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Why should a company build faster than they are currently doing? There are several aspects to the answer that we give and they are as follows. We offer a brief explanation of some of the key points:
1. Better management efficiencies throughout the entire organization
2. Productivity per man-hour correspondingly goes up
3. Time-savings drive cost-savings
4. Creates a high leverage factor with resource management
5. Dramatic profit increases without more risk
6. Impacts of cycle-time reduction with annual work load factors
I would like to take each one separately and discuss the empirical findings that our company has found over a long study period.
1. If an organization has been in place for a number of years it has its own built-in characteristics. We always and almost without exception that most construction organizations that cross over the one-man operation scenario are sluggish and poorly organized. You might ask why; and this is what we always in fact as ourselves when confronted with a new client company. The answer is quite simple on the surface but runs much more complicated under the surface. The short answer is that the organization most likely grew on its own without any forethought as to future growth and efficiencies are concerned. And the owner of the company just lets it take its own natural course.
The longer answer is that things get screwed up fast when a good company is confronted with brisk sales and commensurate housing construction delivery schedules that impact the organization from all angles. Here are a few of these characteristics:
1. The owner of a company that builds more than 25 houses per year usually needs some help to run the company. And this help is added-on as needed, which in and of itself is not all bad if the primary controlling factors are taken care of; but they usually they aren't. These factors are "how" the company operates in its higher-production needs environment.
2. Does it operate efficiently?
3. Is the operation in general effective in how it in fact does things, e.g., planning, organizing, scheduling and implementing what the former three dictate. Does the operation work?
4. Does it feel good as a house-sold unit moves its way completely through the system of your company? This owner can't do everything him/herself. They feel that in their bones if you know what we mean.
5. Are your people happy and feel competent in doing their jobs well?
6. Do your home-buyers/commercial construction clients feel good about what they see in both you as the company leader and organizer as well as those with whom these customers/clients interact?
7. Are your profits at the mark where you want them? Are they up to the standards set by the construction industry leaders, e.g., the NAHB or the ABC and AGC organizations that publish these standards in one form or another.
Are you thinking as you read these points how your organization measures up? Either it does or it doesn't and sometimes that is hard to face up to ~
8. Do you retain your key management people or is there a constant turn-over in your staff? Do they leave angry? Do they quickly jump out of the frustrations in management style and other impediments that they both see and feel being carried out contrary to their best judgment?
9. Do you hear that others within and without your organization complaining that no one listens to them, thinking that they might want to contribute to organizational improvements within their scopes of work, or just in general, but no one apparently cares enough to listen ~ or change?
10. Do you build slow and haphazardly? In other words you receive a house 'mostly' completed just whenever it happens to come out the other end of your production process?
11. Does the construction schedule on your projects run the job or do the subs and suppliers?
We could go on and on, but suffice it to say that there are a multitude of reasons WHY a company or larger organization might want or need to build smarter and faster. The real question that shouts out for an answer is just this:
WHY DON'T YOU TAKE A HARD LOOK AT YOUR ORGANIZATION AND MEASURE UP TO THE SIMPLE QUESTIONS LISTED ABOVE AND ASK YOURSELF WHY YOU KEEP DOING THINGS THE WAY THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY DOING THEM.
Simply as yourself these questions and be honest enough with yourself to accept the obvious answers that you find. Remember that if you keep doing the things that you are doing you will keep getting the results that you are getting! Building faster is better! It IS the competitive advantage of the new millennium...
[We might be able to help you see things within your organization that possibly you just can't seem to see yourself]
~ Jack Nieporte