Replies

1. 
   TrimButcher | Jun 06, 2003 09:45pm | #1

   You know there's no magic wand; the more detail ya got, the more time (and money) you need to spend tracking it.  Projects are 50% planning, 25% change management, and 25% is actual work (or so I've heard, grin).  FWIW:

   You didn't say whether on-site partner's laptop has wireless capability?  Perhaps he needs wireless email, like a handheld Blackberry?  That way the office partner and field partner could send/receive email to each other.  A lot better, more permanent, and easier data to manage/file than cellphone/verbal info.  It also might allow you to do purchase orders from the site? (I'm not sure why you can't do that already, you didn't explain)

   The onsite partner needs a daily early-morning site meeting to update the crew/subs on all new issues/changes.  Beside each change item (in a grid) is the name of each affected crew/sub.  Check off everyone who is in attendance.  Gives a clear view of who hasn't heard about a change and needs to be pulled aside later for an update.  If you did this grid in a spreadsheet or database, you could then run a query for all missing checkmarks against, say, the plumbing sub.  Then you pull him aside and tell him every change that has come up since you last spoke.  Then print off a copy of the issues that pertain to him.  All issues/changes made get a paper copy(s) filed in an onsite file box for crew/subs to refer to.  The change order has boxes to be checked for which of the crew/subs get affected (e.g. to move a fixture, lets say framing crew,  electrical sub and HVAC sub have to know).  Each of those crew/subs gets a copy in their file.  It's up to the sub/crew to annotate their copy of their plans with the reference # of the pertinent change order.

   I use both a digital voice recorder (DVR) for quick notes.  I can also use the DVR for recording exactly what the client is saying.  After getting permission, it'll become 2nd nature to turn it on whenever the client opens their mouth.  I didn't buy the DVR with the biggest memory, I bought the DVR with the best microphone.  You don't want to keep these notes on the DVR indefinitely, you need them transcribed perhaps daily (thus memory shouldn't be the important feature).  You can get DVRs with a PC hookup, too.  This would allow the site partner to record his own notes and client's, upload them each night, and email them to the office for an office clerk to transcribe (so that pertinent items can make the change order grid for the next morning's site meeting).  Also, these WAV sound files can then be saved indefinitely on a PC.  This way, if a client says "I didn't tell you to paint it grey, I said GREEN", you can pull the WAV file and play it back and find out who is correct (and thus who is paying for the fix).  DVRs are thus more powerful than a cellphone with a note-taking feature.

   "How to keep a record of changes and additions to the plans without writing a change order for every outlet that moves, or light fixture relocation?"  Just how long does it take you to write a change order for moving a fixture?  I assume your change orders are a standard printed/electronic format.  If that change order is more than a few sentences and takes more than 2 minutes to execute, you've got a procedural problem. 

   Finally, bottom line, you can have different sources of info/change orders (e.g. conversation, phone messages, email, fax, handwritten, DVR) but you need to standardize how it is filed.  This is what I'm getting at with the change order grid and file box.  All change orders, regardless of the format received, must be entered into an electronic database.  Customer and partners must sign off in agreement with wording.  Affected crew/subs must be signed off when they receive the printed info at the site meeting.  When you talk about an electronic bulletin board, I can understand that problems arise beyond just the fact that not everyone is computer literate.  Bulletins allow formless information. Excuse me for stating the obvious, but change orders provide ordered information.   What this means is that A) you need a PC guru to set up a change order database and B) you need a (part-time?) office clerk to keep the database absolutely current, whether she's receiving email, faxes, WAV files, voicemail, etc.  This person doesn't actually have to work in the office.  If you don't already have someone who does this/can do this, hire part-time an intelligent stay-at-home mother who has a connected PC and a separate phoneline.  There's probably a big, cheap labour pool available.

   I don't know what your change order form looks like, but darn near everything is a change order.  It may not result in changing the house or costing the client more money, but it's still a (procedural) change (e.g.  From now on, all hammers will be Estwing.  Carpenters are to lock up job box at end of day.  Wood trim for job will be stored in Master bedroom until used. etc, etc).  It still needs to be entered in the database and disseminated to affected parties.

   Finally, if you must...you could still actually mount a large bulletin board/whiteboard once you have a framed wall and make handwritten notes for everyone on site to read. (Yuck! Emergency last resort!)

   Summary:

   1) Make it easy to receive any and all info: DVR, cellphones, Blackberry, email, etc.

   2) Standardize info storage: Office clerk creates Change order!  Adds to Change Order Database!  On site Partner/Lead Carp synchronize daily their laptop's Change order database with office clerk's before hitting job site.

   3) Disseminate standardized Change order info:  Daily site meeting.  Check off recipients.  Hard copy for affected crew/subs/customer for their file and to annotate their copies of plans.

   Hope this helps,

   Tim Ruttan

1. 
   skids | Jun 06, 2003 10:31pm | #2

   hey tim what would you charge to come work for me and spend a couple weeks to get it up and running, excellent answer to the question, i learned a lot. i have spent my life in the field working and while i still have much to learn there i know nothing of business. in my opinion even a bad plan is better than no plan and yous sounds quite good to me!

2. 
   JerraldHayes | Jun 07, 2003 01:20am | #4

   Wow Tim that is absolutely a great post. I'm 100% behind you on everything you said there with the possible exception of "all hammers will be Estwing" (I wouldn't call for all wooden handled Vaughn or Harts, just thinking about an Estwing makes my elbows hurt). Your mention of digital recording devices jolted me into thinking again that that's a way I should go. I been using one of those mini cassette recorders doing what you described for maybe a decade now and its showing it's age (sometimes on a whim it just decides to change speeds). We're a Mac operation (although I getting ready to buy my first PC) and I think the Mac tools are fantastic for organizing and working with digital photos and I've got to imagine the audio tools are very good too although I haven't explored them yet. I've also got to believe that keeping them on a hard disk is more organized and more permanent than the shoe box I keep all my old cassettes in.

   But really that's just a real great set advice.

   Question for you though. A little background first, while back on the JLC site in a couple of discussions regarding timekeeping I was advocating collecting timecard information everyday from employees (as well as other jobsite records) and basically the majority of the folks there dismissed what I was saying or gave an argument as to why it couldn't be done or wouldn't work. I wrote:

   An example from outside our own industry:

   In the past two years I’ve read two books on FedEx The World on Time (The 11 management Principles That Made FedEx an Overnight Sensation) and just the other month Customer Culture (How FedEx and Other Great Companies Put the Customer First Every Day).

   In reading those two books and some others it my understanding that FedEx (and UPS) delivery drivers are paid by the truckload (or at least that is the major part of the compensation formula). If a driver delivers the truckload in 7 hours he makes more per hour than if it take 10. So the productivity of delivering as many packages as possible as fast as possible in hard in the mind of the delivery driver and yet they seem to be able to record information of When The Package Was Delivered and Who Signed for It with every single one of the packages they deliver in a day.

   Do the FedEx and UPS delivery drivers see the collection and entry of that data around 50 times a day as “too much of a pain in the ####?” I’m really sorry but the PITA argument in my mind is patently absurd. And like so many of the other arguments you hear against the adoption. of good business practices the PITA reasoning is just an excuse.

   No they don’t see it as a PITA they see it as “PART OF THE JOB”. If you don’t make keeping accurate time card records PART OF THE JOB then all it is to your employees is a PITA.

   Really think about. First of all it takes maybe a minute for an employee to pull a timecard out of there pocket and write down “8am-11:30am Doors”. Was that so hard? If these people can get mortgages for their home or car loans and help their children by filling out financial aid applications to colleges then they can certainly fill out a timecard. A minute or two of time three or four times a days is a PITA?

   If they don’t see any advantage to doing it as they are going along during the day they can certainly do it at the end of the day. Is that a PITA? Or is just plain keeping Timecard records period a PITA?

   Regarding “Some days can be pretty hectic, with multiple tasks.” Well not really at least on average form what I been able to see having collected this kind of information for years. Yeah every once in a while you get a day with multiple activities but even then days with more that eight differing activities are very rare. In my company it’s my own TimeCard that has the most different activities most often and the kind of data I record for both my company and myself is a lot more specific and detailed than the data set that Peter’s employees are recording.

   In my company I want to know are you installing doors? Base trim? Cornice? Installing Curved Woodwork? Etc whereas in Peter’s company all those groups come under one heading,…Millwork. It all depends on the company and what you need the information for. Knowing how much time my employees spend on Millwork is useless in that that is 98% of what we do. I need to know what kind of millwork operation was taking place.

   In Peter’s case where his employees do all sorts of general stuff (he’s a “General Contractor” where I am an “Architectural Woodworker”) that kind of specificity might be overkill. Even then though I will bet that real world data will show you patterns of work where a guy was installing doors from Monday till 11am on Thursday morning when he switched to Installing Base Molding.

   How do you know the patterns of work until you record and analyze the data? In keeping all of these timecard records what has been most reveling to me is not what my employees are doing but what I am actually doing. The disparity between what I think I’ve been working on and getting done and the reality of what I actually do is sometimes astounding.

   There are periods of time where for weeks I spend 20 to 30 hours a week just driving around!

   The TimeCard application I wrote is a Tool. More specifically management tool for analyzing the TimeCard data your collecting. Like any tool the choice as to how accurately you are going to use it is up to you. I have a circular saw and I can use it to cut with 1/4” accuracy or to 1/16”. It’s my choice.

   Without re-posting everything I wrote over there don't you think the key number one obstacle to modernizing and bringing small and midsize building and remodeling companies (under 10 million and 1 million volumes respectively) into this century is cultural (and by that I mean business culture). I mean my argument is that the people who work for FedEx and UPS are certainly not more intelligent or inherently more digitally skilled than the carpenters or other tradespeople we have working for us. Why is like pulling teeth getting these people to adopt technology that will improve business organization and productivity?

   An by "these people" I don't just mean to single out tradespeople I also mean business owners. I am first of all just amazed at how many contractors don't even use excel for estimating! But then again I am amazed at of those that have taken at least that step then print out their estimates or quotes and then want to fax them to me! I hate faxes! I actually fax very very rarely now. Faxes need to be manually transcribed when you get them. I absolutely 100% prefer digital copy either e-mail or the actual computer document. That way I can copy and paste data from the e-mail or document straight into my own programs.

   Faxes! Geez they're at least twice the work of digital copy.

   Frustrated with how much time I was spending collecting and transcribing information I actually developed a simple estimating program in FileMaker that I would then give to subcontractors I was working with who weren't computerized or had primitive systems just so that they could automate and speed up that work process for themselves and I would get the information I wanted all ready organized and formatted to import directly into my systems.

   As far as timekeeping nowadays I actually have three out of four of my employees now keeping their timecards (and other project related information) on Palm handhelds and I think my last hold out who is a real old timer is finally going to cave in this summer and go digital. FrankF said "Tried a web based private bulletin board to post info about each job and things related to it, but found it too cumbersome to use. Not everyone has the same computer skills. " And while I understand that I think it incumbent on us as business owners to either find a solution that's easy enough to work or train our employees in those skills. A year and a half ago I had an employee who when I mentioned to him that I wanted to train him in a few things so he could enter his data into a computer I had on the job said "Nah, I'm really not interested in learning any of that stuff". He was shocked a month later when I asked him to look for a position with another company.

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   "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

1. 
   pm22 | Jun 07, 2003 06:30am | #6

   Jerrald,

   Nice post but I differ with you about "A minute or two of time three or four times a days is a PITA? " I just started a job at an un-named Maryrot Super motel in an un-named city in southern Calif with a couple of aircraft carriers displacing its blue bay waters. First thing is to sign in on the employer's time sheet. OK. Then go down to the other end of the hall and there is a Maryot guy sitting behind a banquet table and you sign your name on a sheet of paper and he gives you a sticker to put on your shirt. So you scribble some name on it and stick it on. OK.

   Then at the end of the day you write your sign-out time on the bosses time sheet. OK. Easy. Then you take the elevator down four floors to the basement. You walk past parked cars for a while and then follow a corridor invented by madmen, er- architects. 200 feet south east past the laundry, 100 feet due south past the stinking garbage dumpster [porta-potty pumper smell], Gag, 100 cubits east past the laundry the 50 meters south west past the cafeteria, then south east again past an empty kitchen, then down another mysterious corridor where you almost miss a sudden left turn onto another hallway off which is located the security dungeon. There sits a clerk - a reject from Fatherland airport security - who can't seem to find the form you signed in on. Like he carefully pulls out pages for June 4th when today is the 6th. Geez!

   So finally I emerge to daylight 2 blocks away from where I started. That is a PITA. I have a feeling that I am going to be cloned 20 times by the time this stint is over -- as far as theiir files are concerned.

   Also, I absolutely agree with you about fax. It's blurry, non-digital [can't copy & paste], can't deal with color and you tie up a seperate phone line for it. Absolutely obsolete technology.

   ~Peter

1. 
   JerraldHayes | Jun 07, 2003 08:25pm | #7

   Well I'll certainly agree with you on that one Peter but that's a good bit different than what I was talking about. We had a job like that a few years ago for a company that was remodeling a section of and ultra high end designer Madison Avenue retailer but there were a few differences, the security personnel were real pros and tool boxes and refuse dumping containers were inspected on the way out.

   We also did a job a few years ago where due to a problem that the project manager had with a sub by the time we arrived on the project he had his super institute a "job reporting program" that had everyone filling out these big reports regarding what they doing in extreme anal retentive detail. I saw it and most of the other subs saw it as this project managers macho way of showing authority or exercising power. It did nothing to improve productivity, quality, or the efficiency of the work going on. It distrupted flow and momentum. We rebelled against it by "memo-ing" the super to death burying him in paperwork I generated asking for clarifications and SKs for details that could easily be explained and comunicated orally. The Super knew the procedure his PM had him implement was bogus and that got him to complain to his PM boss about it and he also pointed the problem out to the PM company's owner too. They soon dropped the procedure.

   I think the key is in something Einstein once said "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. "

   In the case of my own company's timekeeping system as soon as I designed it I asked employees for suggestions as to how to simplify it. In fact as aI was creating it in the first place I asked for their input on it telling them what I was trying to achieve with it and why. We're still working on it too both improving it's accuracy and trying to simplify and streamline how the data (and what data) is being collected.

   What's it done for is is it's helped us eliminate some of the tasks we are not efficient or productive at and instead we bagan outsourcing them and concentrated on our areas of expertise and profitability. For instance I always had a hunch it was "a little" more efficient and less expensive for us to outsource dovetailed drawer box production but I never would have imagined that it 8 times more expensive for us to be doing it in house! Yikes!

   I think the timekeeping system and the daily job reporting system we have is kind of like the controls instruments on an airplane. They're all there to tell me how well the plane is running and to make sure it's going in the right direction. If its telling me something I don't really need or want to know, or doesn't add any customer value, then it's a waste (or to use the lean term "muda") and should be eliminated.

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   "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

2. 
   skids | Jun 06, 2003 10:33pm | #3

   frank where in norcal? I am in norcal too and maybe we could go in together to get tim out here for some consulting?

3. 
   JerraldHayes | Jun 07, 2003 01:21am | #5

   Frank I also wanted to ask you about your comments "Tried a web based private bulletin board to post info about each job and things related to it, but found it too cumbersome to use. Not everyone has the same computer skills. " to find out a little more about why that didn't work. Was it the quality of the web bb service or what? I actually began using my company's website more for the exchange of project information than as a marketing piece years ago and it's been extremely effective. From then until now it been primarily to distribute information rather than collect it but I getting set to change that now and take it to the next level within the next year.

   ---

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   "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead