The 3-Week Schedule

March 30, 2007

The 3-week schedule is (should be) a subset of the main CPM project schedule. It is more of the ground-level plan that changes on a weekly basis and is used during the weekly production meetings with the general contractor.

It should be used along with the CPM schedule as the primary tool for showing what you plan to do in the short-term, making sure that there is a clear path for you to work in including no conflicts with other trades, all permits are done and RFI’s answered.

Any impacts should be noted on the 3-week schedule and anything that is required to be done by others before you can do your work should be noted on the schedule.

It is not suppose to be complicated, just a simple document with a few notes on it and the activities / work areas over the next few weeks.

When the meeting with the GC is complete the schedule should be sent over to them as a ‘record of what we are going to do.’ This will benefit you if they do not get done what was agreed to during the meeting or if the reschedule something else and disrupt your flow.

If the GC does not want to meet and have regular coordination meetings then you should send it over anyway with a cover stating that this is your plan for the next few weeks and to please contact you if there are any problems they see with the schedule.

If done correctly these can give you a ton of leverage.

On the production side it makes the superintendent really think ahead. At each line item you can question them and make sure they have (1) the materials they need, (2) the manpower, (3) the equipment, (4) all answers to open RFI’s, and (5) any permits they may need.

As the PM if you are looking at the project schedule, comparing it to the 3-week schedule and asking these questions you will more than make up for the couple hours this takes each week by the increased production you get by having all the materials, equipment and manpower on-site you need to get the job done. You will also increase production because you will have the plan documented with the GC and should they get in your way you will have a clear, documented basis for a change.

For the super they will have a clear plan to communicate with their crew and any production planning / tracking is simply a subset of the planned activities in the 3-week schedule.

Like the production tracking this is not about paperwork for the sake of paperwork. It is a critical planning tool for making sure that everything in the short-term is planned for and production can proceed smoothly. Running a job should not mean running around in a constant state of panic trying to put out fires. Some of this will never be eliminated because of the variables in construction but many “fires” could have been seen well in advance with the right planning and solid Q&A discussion between the PM and super/foreman.

See Excel Tools for Contractors on our website for worksheets including a 3-Week Schedule that you can download and use.

The Winning Thought Process #2

March 24, 2007

I just finished reading Losing My Virginity - by Richard Branson again. It is a very good book and makes you realize more than anything that if you simply have the right mindset you can achieve anything. Richard Branson lived on the edge of constant failure for more than 20 years while building the Virgin Group which was basically started on a payphone and some free shop space in a not-so-great area of town for the first Virgin music store.

Someone noticed me reading it the other day and I commented on how Richard Branson "just did it" when most people would worry about things and do nothing. No matter how much I tried to explain how he got started and struggled all she could see was that today, almost 30 years later he is rich. She could not make the connection that she could actually achieve the exact same thing if she "just did it" the same way Richard Branson did.

Again, this is the key difference between those who win and those who don't. Quite simply it is all in the thought process and how you frame things. If you never take a risk it will not guarantee that you will never fail but it will also guarantee that you will never win big.

It reminds me of a quote I keep on my desk at all times:

"Some people succeed because they are destined to but most succeed because they are determined to."

Winning Personality

March 19, 2007

I read a quote from somewhere and I can't fully remember it but the basics boiled down to this:

"Whether you think you will succeed or think you will fail either way you will be right."

I can't even begin to say how true this is. In the companies we meet this is the biggest single deciding factor in how quickly they can move from point 'A' to point 'B'.

You can take the exact same situation and one person will choose to be positive while one chooses to be negative. Even if the person with the negative outlook has way more skills they will almost always be outperformed by the person who believes they will succeed.

It's simple - think positive and you will win!

Construction Workforce - Electrical Industry

March 16, 2007

According to the BLS there will be a 11.8% increase in the number of electricians and electrical engineers required. This presents a HUGE opportunity for anyone looking to enter the industry.

Wanted: Skilled Labor

If you are interested in building your career in the Electrical Industry learn more here.

Making Sense of Shifting Markets

March 14, 2007

Overview of the electrical market from EC&M Magazine - January 2007

Woman-Owned Construction Businesses

March 13, 2007

EC&M Magazine recently ran an article called No Man's Land that highlighed some of the opportunities and challenges of being a WBE (Women's Business Enterprise).

TrueNorth Development

March 12, 2007

Consulting company specializing in the homebuilding industry.

TrueNorth Development
141 North Center, Suite 201
Northville, MI 48167
Phone: 248-348-6011
Fax: 248-305-6613
www.truen.com
Scott Sedman, President
scott@truen.com

Recent Articles:

The Last Word on Lean - Great article on some areas where Lean Construction can help not only homebuilders but any contractor

UDA ConstructionOffice

March 11, 2007

Some interesting products to take a look at if you are investigating streamlining your technology systems:

www.udatechnologies.com

Engineering & Construction in Dubai

March 10, 2007

These slides got forwarded to me by a good friend, Ethelyne Molnar of Brown Construction. I'm sure that almost everyone in construction has already seen these or some form of them but the magnitude of the engineering and construction still amazes me!

Google's HR

March 08, 2007

A recent article in HR Executive magazine discusses some of the changes made to hiring withing Google and the addition of Laszlo Bock from GE as the VP of People Operations.

There are many great ideas here for any company to think about when it comes to managing their talent.

The Great Game of Measurements

March 07, 2007

This morning Seth Godin makes some comments related to employees at Sears gaming the system setup by management to try to get customers served within 10 minutes. I completely agree with the comment at the end of the post.

"Often, more effort goes into circumventing a system then it would take to just do a great job in the first place..."

This is more of a "fact" than an observation and anyone who has tried to put measurement and reward systems in place knows this.

Often when first trying to put a system in place the people on the team immediately seek to find a way to "game the system" and the desired results are not achieved.

If this is the first time management has tried to put something like this in place they get frustrated and simply throw up their hands saying "this will never work!"

What needs to happen is that management needs to look hard at both how and why the rules of the game and scoring system did not produce the desired business results. They then need to tweak the system a little and watch, tweak and watch, again and again.

Over time this practice will produce a great operating system for the company. If you give up on every system that does not work without asking why and then trying to tweak it a company will just move from one worthless measurement system to the next without ever achieving results.

One of the best books I have read regarding this subject is "The Great Game of Business"

Measure What Matters

March 06, 2007

John Moore pointed out a great quote from Jack Welch:

“Too often we measure everything and understand nothing. The three most important things you need to measure in a business are customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If you’re growing customer satisfaction, your global market share is sure to grow, too. Employee satisfaction gets you productivity, quality, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the pulse—the key vital sign of a company.”-- JACK WELCH --

Thanks John for pointing this out again. With the advent of computer technology it is so easy to measure every detail of a business and overlook the true things that matter. The book, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will was a great book with timeless advice.

For a contractor most of the critical measurements can be found between the Work-In-Progress (WIP) schedule and the Accounts Receivable Aging report with a customer satisfaction survey added in.

User Documentation / Marketing / Profits

Kathy Sierra makes some great points in her post called "The Best User Manuals EVER" about how valuable people find documentation.

We discussed this previously in a post - Marketing Should Be Involved In Many Company Processes

If you are a contractor I encourage you to look at these articles with an open mind and think about how you could improve your project documentation such as proposals, pre-construction guidelines, submittals, as-builts, drawings, specifications, training, etc.

You would be suprised at how much of a difference minor improvements can make when it comes to both customer satisfaction, the "perception" of your company and profits.

Scoreboards & Construction

March 05, 2007

I just read a great article in Contractor Magazine by Dennis Sowards called You Can Be Guided by Scoreboard, Dashboard.

The article makes some great points about why a clear company scoreboard is necessary and also about the challenges of managing a company by a scoreboard that is populated with old information.

We always work hard with clients to get them focused on this line of thinking - especially when it comes to providing feedback to the field where a lot of money is made and lost every day. We focus heavily on this subject with our Project Pre-Planning Facilitation and also with our "Profit Happens Here..." series of construction training modules including slides taken from the Production Tracking module as shown below.

Project Manager Bonuses

March 04, 2007

Contractor Magazine published a quick excerpt from FMI's 2007 Contractor Productivity Survey showing the range of bonuses paid to Project Managers.

This is a question we get asked often and there is no perfect answer to compensation questions. Since base compensation and benefits can vary so widely it makes little sense to compare bonuses given as a percentage of that base but it is always good to have a little information when making decisions.

A better strategy is to have your accounting systems be able to solidly tie profitability to specific people or groups of people and then talk about compensation in terms of how much profit is generated - a ROI calculation.

Fine-Tune Your Marketing Plan

March 03, 2007

Doug Dwyer makes a multitude of great points in his February column called Fine-Tune Your Marketing Plan.

Of particular interest is how he describes marketing as being integral to every part of the company, not just a collection of advertisements and sales collatoral.

Contractors as a whole do a very poor job of marketing and that causes many to leave hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit on the table each and every year.

Mashups - IT Dashboard Technology

March 02, 2007

This is a technology to keep your eye on - it allows for easily making your own dashboards of information using tools known as Widgits, Wikis, etc.

No exact applications for contractors at this time but it will come in the near future and will really help the executive decision making process.

Mashups Make Their Way Into Business Apps--Slowly

The High Cost Of Turnover

March 01, 2007

While in Santa Barbara last weekend for a company getaway with one of our clients I picked up the paper and found a great article by Jim Pawlak that did a fantastic job of describing what the true cost of employee turnover is. It is only by looking at numbers like these that you can truly set a budget for recruting and retention.

I wanted to provide a link to the article but could not find one - I emailed Jim and he was nice enough to send this over to republish here.

CAREER MOVES
02/17/07
Jim Pawlak

Hot off the newswire – The demand for electrical workers is skyrocketing. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates demand will outstrip supply by more than 78,000 workers by 2014. The shortage is so acute that the National Association of Electrical Contractors and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have pooled their efforts to promote apprenticeship programs in the industry.

You’ll need a solid background in math to get into an apprenticeship program. For more information, head for www.electrifyingcareers.com. You can browse 59 job descriptions and view video commentary of apprentices pursuing their careers. There’s information for guidance counselors and parents, too.

Temporary legal staffing is another fast growing field – especially for paralegals, legal assistants and legal secretaries. Growth is concentrated in the large metropolitan areas, with New York City and Washington D.C. accounting for about 16 percent of the jobs.

Spherion, a national recruiting and staffing company, completed its “Workplace Snapshot” survey for 2006. It showed that 21 percent of US workers voluntarily changed jobs in 2006. That’s the sign of a good economy (except for the rust belt). The top two reason for changing jobs: 1. Growth and earnings potential (30 percent); 2. Time and flexibility (23 percent).

The downside of such a large voluntary job change is the cost of turnover to employers. Spherion’s report says turnover costs $7K for an hourly worker, $30K for a mid-level salaried employee and up to $80K for technical employees and senior managers. So if a firm lost just one of each during a year, the one-year cost of finding and training replacements and covering the lost productivity of those who left (i.e. the three new employees would have a learning curve) totals $117K.

Now for the really bad news: The effect of turnover on profits. For my example, let’s assume that the three employees left January 1, 2007 and the firm has a five percent after-tax profit margin. To ensure the loss of the three employees had no impact on its bottom line, the company would have to generate INCREMENTAL sales of $2.34 million in 2007: $117K / .05.

My point: Finding three replacements is easy. Finding the incremental sales needed to offset recruiting and training costs and the productivity of three experienced workers is very difficult. HR managers can use the Spherion costs, their employee turnover data and the simple example to build a business case for retention programs.
Process improvement has long been limited to the backroom. Not anymore. Retailing giant, Wal-Mart, taking a cue from its vaunted just-in-time logistics system, will move many of its 1.3 million workers from standard shifts to customer-driven shifts. The customer-friendly shifts will ensure that stores are fully-staffed during peak shopping times. Wal-Mart says no hours will be cut and that employees will know their shifts at least three weeks in advance. It will try to make allowances for employee preferences, too.

While it may be great for customers, I guarantee the system will create problems for some employees – mostly those with latchkey kids and daycare situations. Been there/seen that: I worked for a company in San Francisco that moved its workday from 7:30- 4:30 to 8-5. The change created havoc because many workers took the Bay ferry, which departed at 4:45. The 4:30 quitting time was ideal for picking up kids at daycare, which all charged by-the-minute for after 6 pick-ups. The same problem existed for those riding the train 45 minutes to the eastern suburbs.

Resumes hit the streets in droves in a matter of days. Turnover went through the roof. Four months and 43 replacements later, management instituted flex time – 7:30-4:30 or 8-5. Too late. Employees continued bailing; they lost faith in management.

I hope Wal-Mart did its homework on its workforce. At its skinny profit margins, the incremental sales it would have to generate to offset turnover costs would be huge.