Tips From the Trades

Ask a group of remodelers what they can learn from trade contractors, and you'll likely get a lot of muttering and more than your fair share of smirks. Trade contractors —more commonly known as subcontractors — are not perfect, of course, but they do some things very well, even better than (gasp!) general contractors.

In this, the second of a four-article series, REMODELING spoke with trade contractors with the goal of learning which of their best practices might be useful to full-service remodeling firms.

“The subcontractor's challenge is to be a chameleon,” says Dan Pitcock, owner of Roberts Electric Co., in Oakland, Calif. This past year, Roberts Electric did more than 1,100 jobs. Pitcock says that 17 contractors, and a handful of property managers and institutional customers, provided roughly 250 of those jobs, while the large majority came from homeowners and small commercial customers. All told, Pitcock and his staff had more than 930 “bosses” this year.

Full-service remodelers aren't likely to have that many masters, but they can take a lesson in how to adjust to different personalities. Much is made of choosing your clients carefully and only working for people you want to work for, but even within that select client base, you're likely to run into a smorgasbord of personalities.

“The contractors we work with run the gamut,” Pitcock says. “Some are very organized, with good plans and specs. Others shoot from the hip. And within each company, the employees have different personalities.” Because of the diversity of the people Roberts Electric works for and with, the company culture might be best summed up in a single word: “flexible.”

This is most apparent in the way Pitcock lets his employees form their own relationships. Pitcock will check on a job once a week or so, but his foremen are the ones meeting daily with the general contractor or job supervisor. Pitcock is available if they absolutely need him, but “we have our own processes and system of decision-making, so that whoever ends up on a job knows what our goals are.” Familiarizing his employees with the details of running a job allows Pitcock scheduling flexibility and ensures that all jobs run smoothly.

Similarly, if you're a full-service remodeler who does a lot of repeat business and is fortunate enough to have limited field crew turnover, you might arrange for the same lead carpenter to handle the second job for a client. (Or not, depending on how well the first experience worked out.) Likewise, if your client is a good friend, relative, or neighbor of an existing client who referred your company, it could be smart to put the same field crew on the new job. It's not unheard of at many established remodeling companies for clients to wait six months or more for “their” lead carpenter to become available before breaking ground on a second phase or a new project.

Shane O'Harra, owner of Timbercraft, a Boise, Idaho, cabinetmaker, says he's observed that general contractors often don't give homeowners enough options. One reason is that, in the midst of designing a complex addition or whole-house remodel, it's easy to think “big picture” and lose sight of the details.

For O'Harra — who, in addition to working for GCs, runs his own projects — the solution is to spend a lot of time listening to homeowners. “A lot of my customers will have ideas,” O'Harra says. They'll have looked at their friends' new cabinets or flagged photographs in magazines. They have an idea of what they want, but they don't truly understand that sinks can be moved, walls removed or relocated, and appliances repositioned. “They think everything has to stay in the same place,” he says. “Their options are a lot broader than what they think.”

O'Harra tries to get beyond what homeowners think they want by learning as much as he can about how they are going to use the space. As a trade contractor specializing in cabinets, he has a broad and deep understanding of the available options and, more importantly, which of those options fit different homeowner needs.

For example, a homeowner who requests a drawer for the microwave is sending off signals to O'Harra that she doesn't want her kitchen to be cluttered by unsightly appliances. O'Harra can then make additional design suggestions that take space and aesthetics into consideration.

Remodelers love to tell horror stories about subs not showing up on time, but few recognize the irony of their own role in the difficulties trade contractors face when scheduling. Plumbers, electricians, and other trade contractors are likely working for several different general contractors simultaneously. That means they need to adjust their schedules any time a job is delayed by weather, a change order, or a missing or damaged fixture. In addition, they have to squeeze in service calls to homeowners —some of whom are your clients and many of which are emergencies that need to be taken care of right away.

So the trades need flexible schedules. At Roberts Electric, Pitcock says he has one crew member always on “float” to handle service calls. At Synergy Environmental, an abatement contractor in Hayward, Calif., vice president Sal Vaccaro says that “our No. 1 strength is our ability to respond in a timely manner. We can do a job tomorrow 95% of the time.” To keep that promise to its clients, Synergy has “extra” crews available to take emergency calls. When the emergency schedule isn't as full, those extra crews increase Synergy's efficiency by doubling up on some of the “regular” jobs.

Nigel Costolloe, president of Catchlight, a painting contractor in Brookline, Mass., keeps crews that work on jobs for homeowners separate from those that work on jobs for contractors. “With a homeowner, deadlines and dates stay pretty firm,” Costolloe says. “With a GC, it keeps moving.” By keeping the crews separate, he prevents the general contractor part of his business from affecting the work the company does for homeowners.

Of course, it's unrealistic for full-service remodelers to keep extra lead carpenters hanging around — it's cost prohibitive, and besides, how many quality leads do you know who are looking for work? But you can take a hint. It wouldn't be a bad idea, for example, to keep your carpenters' and helpers' schedules flexible enough that they could be moved from job to job if one project gets behind or is particularly labor-intensive. Better planning is critical to avoid creating the feeling among field crew that they're being yanked from job to job.

O'Harra has a couple of tips for handling scheduling pickles. The first is to avoid them, in his case by staying in contact with the contractor he's working with, rather than just showing up on the appointed date. The sooner he knows about a potential delay, the more likely it is he'll be able to avoid a conflict.

However, some delays are inevitable. When they do occur, O'Harra says that solving the problem comes down to people skills. Rather than commit to a schedule he can't keep (ahem, does this sound familiar?), O'Harra likes to be upfront with the contractor. “If I can't make it within their [new] timeframe, I tell them when I can,” he explains. “Then, I talk to my next customer.” Far more often than not, O'Harra is able to work out a solution that leaves everyone happy.

The lesson for full-service remodelers is clear: Be realistic about your schedule. Trade contractors can't say “We'll make it up,” which is what so many remodelers do when they fall behind. Don't over-promise and under-deliver, something that remodelers are notorious for with both clients and trade contractors.

Trades — plumbers and electricians in particular — are meticulous about keeping track of the materials they use on each job. They do this primarily because of the substantial inventory they keep in their trucks. At Romano Plumbing in Boise, employees itemize what they use on every job, according to Julie Romano, who owns the company along with her husband, Jim. Unless the company is doing a rare time-and-materials job, the materials and their costs are listed simply as “rough materials” on the invoice. But that “behind-the-scenes” paperwork helps Jim Romano — who checks and restocks the trucks —keep track of what the company has used.

Remodelers could adopt this practice for change orders. Too often, a change order is agreed to and completed without being written up, and when it's time for final billing, sometimes weeks or months later, the contractor is stuck trying to remember what materials were used and how much time it took, often erring in the customer's favor, just to be safe.

Even if your change order procedures are relatively sound, having your carpenters write down everything they use daily on change-order work is a good way to make sure everything is being accounted for and nothing is being inadvertently given away to the homeowner. It's easy to remember that the entry door had to be moved and re-installed; it's just as easy to forget the tube of caulk, the can of spray foam, and replacement weather stripping needed to complete the job.

There's an old joke in the construction industry about an electrician running out to his truck to grab a part, returning seconds later to find the plumber laying pipe through the hole he just finished drilling. It's apocryphal, but there's a lot of truth in it; trades (the good ones, at least) are very good at keeping the other trades in mind when completing their work.

This is a difficult skill to quantify, and a lot of it boils down to experience. For example, an experienced framer might revise the floor-framing plans to make for easier installation of a waste line into the bathroom.

Whereas trades tend to work in the same sequence job after job after job and are therefore familiar with the needs of the trade coming in immediately after them, remodelers tend to overlook things that can make life difficult for the trades. Gregory Henry, owner of framing contractor Stephen Davis Construction, in Falls Church, Va., says he often works for contractors who are used to doing things in phases. “That works fine for them,” Henry says, “but subs don't want to do it that way.” Indeed, wiring the north side of the house and the returning later to wire the south side will cause undue hardship to your electrician, who would rather do the whole thing at once to avoid return trips and scheduling bottlenecks. “All of your subs will be happier if you eliminate as many phases as possible,” Henry says.

It's also not enough to schedule your trade contractors in a logical sequence; you need to make sure that the site is properly prepared for the next sub to come in. Framers, for instance, need to have the foundation set and the site graded before they can do their work. By putting yourself in their shoes — asking yourself, “If I had to frame this house, would I be able to?” — you'll save them some time and headaches, and your projects will run a lot more smoothly.