Waiting is a great profit-robber for contractors of all sizes. Contractors are not overreacting or micro-managing because they want to ensure clarity and see that things get done the right way the first time! The waiting game, which virtually every contractor experiences several times every week if not every day, is a waste that costs construction contractors time, quality, productivity and profitability.
Is there a waste that is experienced by more contractors than the waste of waiting? While there are always good reasons that an individual or crew might need to wait, our focus on waiting is purely directed at those wasted minutes and hours spent waiting due to a breakdown in communication or planning. Can any contractor eliminate all of their waiting contributors? Of course not! But we can greatly reduce the actual time spent waiting by workers in our organization.
Just consider some of the things a contractor might spend time waiting on:
Crew members showing up to work on time
Crew members showing up to a jobsite on time
Concrete crew waiting on a material truck so they can pour and finish a concrete slab
Crew waiting on crane operator to move needed equipment or resources
Contractor waiting on a customer to show up and discuss their needs
Project manager waiting on architect to finish drawings
Superintendent waiting on another contractor to show up at jobsite
Material plant manager waiting on contractors to place order
Let’s consider a few causes for waiting experienced by many contractors and their people:
Little to no planning
Poor or no communication
Misunderstanding about need, intent or expectation
Too many people “assume”
Apathetic or low-motivated workers
Little to no accountability
Poorly trained workers
Forgetful or poorly focused workers
I’m sure that there are another hundred or so causes, but I think you get the idea. But here’s the key to keep in mind: such waiting is costing you money. In some cases, lots of waiting!
Overcome the Waiting Game
So, how can you overcome the waste of the waiting game? Let’s consider 10 proven solutions that you can incorporate immediately.
Deliver instructions with greater clarity as to who is doing what, when, why and where.
After providing instruction, direction or making a request ask the “receiver” what she heard from you.
When placing a request or order to another person or organization over the phone ask that individual to confirm what he understood.
If you are dealing with a “repeat waster” be sure to remind the person of your instruction or request and have him repeat back to you the same.
If placing request or order well in advance, follow-up with an e-mail, fax or written note with a confirmation.
When training be sure to always perform a “watch-do” where the learner watches a demonstration and then performs the same task herself with a watchful teacher looking on.
Plan your projects, tasks and assignments to the level of understanding and competency of the people charged with executing them.
Be aware of the level of focus and motivation in your own workers and prepare to take action that might refocus their attention or put a little fire under their attitude. If this fails, consider discipline or separation.
Be sensitive to the level of focus or motivation of suppliers, other contractors or customers and expend additional energy and communication to clarify and confirm.
Live by the motto, “When in doubt…repeat!” Never ASSUME people get it the first time or that a nod of the head means they understand. “Yes!” doesn’t always mean, “I understand.”
John has a good pavement maintenance company in the big picture of things. He’s a hard working contractor who has a normal mix of long term and short term workers. However, he can’t quite seem to break through the profitability ceiling, or “PC.” As much as he figures and refigures his estimating efforts he still is falling 3%, 5%, even 9% short of the gross profit that he should be realizing on most jobs. His frustrations led to his asking me to come along side for the rest of this year to get him over the “PC” barrier.
Too many good contractors are struggling today with getting that next 3%-5% of gross profit. Some contractors are literally approaching double figures in shortages from what they should be experiencing on their gross profit. After reviewing John’s work processes that his field guys practiced I’m convinced that he can realize greater gross profit and tighten up his job-site productivity but it’s going to take some good planning, execution, and commitment.
Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Pre-Planning For Job-Site Productivity
First, most pavement maintenance contractors, do a horrible job of pre-planning their projects. This is their first mistake. Pre-planning, especially pre-construction, is a specialized effort among general construction companies and our industry could learn much from the same effort.
Pre-construction, with an emphasis on pre-planning, begins when a field leader takes all the collected information from the estimate and begins to review what he and his crew can do to maximize the production effort. This means recognizing where trucks, equipment, materials, etc. should be delivered, unloaded, loaded, and stored. This effort alone costs many contractors thousands of dollars a year in accidents and damaged materials when not done.
Second, continuing the pre-planning effort, the contractor should then set out the next week schedule by each Friday for the next week of work. I introduced many years ago the “Next Week Look Ahead” to our industry at our annual conferences. The contractors who have embraced this tool confidently share that this process of planning will add 2%-4% almost immediately to their gross profit, often more. The big objection I hear for not doing this is that “the schedule will always change.” The scheduled does change periodically but by having the plan in place the alternative decisions can be made faster and with more foresight. There is absolutely no excuse for not planning!
Third, there needs to be an organized process to unload, place, store, and load equipment, tools, materials, etc. This can also be preplanned by creating something Japanese Management has called “5-S.” There are five components involved with incorporate 5-S but one effort that is critical for us here is the development of a 5-S Map.
Develop Your 5-S Map for Job-Site Productivity
A 5-S Map can be used for many purposes that will help to keep things organized and encourage a cleaner and safer job, job-site, more organized trucks, and especially yards and shops. Consider an aerial drawing of your tool truck where you have most of your equipment and hand tools stored. Once drawn, you then identify where each item is to be kept. You can do this by drawing an arrow to the location on the truck where the item is to be kept and then writing what the item is such as rakes, blowers, buckets, etc.
You should have a 5-S Map done on your shop, yard, etc. Also, I recommend drawing a 5-S Map for how you want to lay out your equipment and tools once you are at a job site. Some contractors argue with me but soon realize how much they can save by having all the items that they will be using lined out or positioned on a job site for faster retrieval and better handling.
Fourth, the leadership to hold morning and afternoon “huddles” between a crew leader and the crew members is crucial for successful production each day. This huddle I’m referring to is a short 3-5 minute meeting at the job site that first clarifies what the targets are for the day, confirming who is doing what on the job, and reminding all workers to important information about the job and safety reminders. This morning huddle isn’t enough, there needs to be a “PM” huddle just before all the workers head home or back to the yard. The afternoon huddle would review what happened during the day, what can be improved, and what can be done to organize the site, trucks, equipment, etc. to make the next day’s production go faster and smoother.
Finally, the most critical issue to busting through your profitability ceiling is to be a driver of the first four items. We have enough to battle each day with inexperienced workers or negative attitudes reflected by many of our workers without you not driving, supporting, and enforcing the completion of the four items listed earlier.
The history of making a New Year’s resolution is actually quite old, beginning back with the Babylonians who made promises to their gods about giving back to others what they had borrowed or stolen. The Romans living during the glory days of the Roman Empire were required to make a promise to the god “Janus” (from which the month “January” derived) and their “Caesar,” that they would have to fulfill or pay some consequence of retribution.
The tradition of making a New Year’s resolution has continued down through the ages and has become more symbolic than actual focused commitment for many people. Who hasn’t made a New Year’s resolution, such as:
Losing weight
Reading more books
Taking more time off to relax
Spending more time with my kids
Completing that remodeling project on the house
On a personal level, making a New Year’s resolution can often end without having reached the desired result. For a contractor, making New Year’s resolutions can be similarly positioned, resulting in the same lack of achievement. Consider some fairly common New Year’s resolutions that many contractors make:
Calling on more prospects per week
Raising prices for work performed
Not allowing one customer to be “my only” customer
Giving employees a bonus (or larger bonus) next year
Conducting more training for employees throughout the year
Insuring that “Crew Huddles” are conducted twice a day…every day
Insuring that the Next Week Look Ahead is completed…every week
All of the above efforts are worthy of our commitment, but how do we create such things and then have the confidence that we can actually achieve the intended results? May I suggest a few tips that can turn your New Year’s resolutions into reality?
Let’s look to a few efforts you can easily make that will move our New Year’s promises to bona-fide goals that have a much higher chance of success. Then, we’ll present a few New Year’s resolutions worthy of your commitment as a contractor.
Moving New Year’s resolutions to goals
Record the resolution and keep it visible to you at the office and in your vehicle.
Put some measurement to the resolution; specific normally outperforms hope.
Create three to five action steps to bring your resolution to reality. Most New Year’s resolutions fail to have a realistic and written action plan.
Share your resolution with a trusted peer, mentor or friend and give him or her permission to hold you accountable to working your action plan.
Set a reward for achieving your resolution at the same time you develop your action plan. This reinforces your “want to.”
Now, you have found out by reading this far that creating one or more New Year’s resolutions is really nothing more than setting goals. First, a word of caution about setting goals. Many contractors have sincere intentions when setting goals, but many of these same contractors fail for two simple reasons:
They set goals that really are not that realistic to reach due to any number of reasons including the lack of resources.
Most contractors who fail to achieve goals — personal or company — fail due to the lack of a well thought out and planned action plan. They simply do not have a goal “road map” to follow and can easily be distracted.
Let’s turn our attention to a few New Year’s resolutions that may very well be worth your attention, resources and documented commitment. I’ll share with you five resolutions that can put your company on the right track to success and assist you getting off to a great start next year.
Five New Year’s resolutions for contractors
#1 “I will commit to reviewing my financials weekly: weekly/year-to-date budget, profit & loss sheet, and cash flow statement.”
Come on now, knowing your financial situation is critical to running your company. Most of the contractors I work with are well aware of the importance to staying on top of their finances. Seeing trends, potential shortfalls or increases are all important.
However, even the best of contractors can get sidelined to dealing with critical issues involving customers, poor performing workers, family issues, etc. It’s important to have your financial needs for information set up at the beginning of the year and then have weekly reports provided for review.
Create the format and consistency early and you’ll be successful at maintaining this first resolution for the entire year and beyond.
#2 “I will conduct a weekly communication meeting with my immediate staff every Monday.”
Fall down here and you fall back into the pit of confusion, miscommunication and poor results. Communication meetings alone will not eliminate all of your problems but will reinforce clarity and correcting faulty thinking, planning or actions before they happen. Call this New Year’s resolution what you want, just be sure to hold your weekly staff meeting every Monday…no exceptions!
#3 “I will see to an accurate schedule being created and maintained.”
Oh boy, now I’m really getting into some kitchens with this one. I’ve never had a contractor or senior leader of any construction company disagree with me that scheduling is first and foremost something that must be done. Yet some of these same contractors and senior leaders become frustrated when schedules are not executed due to weather, poor performance, special customer requests, etc.
Scheduling isn’t just the document or the white board with a bunch of tasks and locations assigned. Rather, it’s a thinking and discussion process that invites a mixture of what is needed to accomplish the schedule with the possibilities for interruptions.
It is in the discussions about the possibilities for interruptions that back-up plans can be created and scheduled.
Be committed to a “look ahead” of some rolling time frame (one, two or three weeks) and schedule your future. Then share the weekly updates with those impacted by and executing your schedule.
#4 “I will see that a preventative maintenance program is developed and monitored.”
Much of the downtime that takes place in the construction industry is due to equipment, vehicle and tool breakdowns. It’s simply amazes me the number of specialty contractors who will forego daily and weekly check-ups and inspections to ensure that the “tools of their trade” are in working order.
Postponing that oil change on a vehicle or delaying checking the lubrication and water levels on equipment is inviting disaster of a major and profitable consequence.
Develop a thorough “PM” plan (i.e. document) for every vehicle, piece of equipment and tool of importance to your work and assign individuals to personally inspect and audit that such efforts are being executed. In the heat of working it is only natural for workers to not stop long enough to inspect their equipment and tools until there is a total breakdown.
#5 “I will personally meet with each employee once or twice a quarter.”
As the owner or a member of the senior leadership team, you must reach out to each of your workers. Certainly it’s easier for the contractor of five to 15 employees to accomplish this action but you might be surprised how many small contractors still do not visit with each worker.
If your possible employee contacts are in the hundreds then certainly adjust your amount of contacts accordingly. BUT, don’t miss the primary point here: build up the people who are building your company!
It is your employees who are executing work that customers either love or will never buy from you again. It is your employees who are creating the reputation of your company that might take you to higher levels of success or require years of repairing. It is your employees who can be just a great leader’s effort away from providing you with more joy, pride and fun to lead than you could have ever imagined.
When you recover from the merry holidays and the New Year’s fireworks take the time and really consider just what you want from this new year. Don’t just think about what you would like to realize this next year…write your New Year’s resolutions down on paper and put some critical thinking to developing plans to reach those resolutions.
You want some real fun? Get your company leaders to set out three to five of their own New Year’s resolutions, following the same guidelines presented earlier.
Here’s to turning your New Year’s resolutions into the greatest year that you’ve had as a contractor or senior leader. Go for it!
