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Last fall, Dale Brenke (Big50 2004) ran a series of television advertisements featuring his company's employees. The series of five commercials showed different employees — a production manager, a salesperson, and installers — at work. In the commercials, each employee looks at the camera and...
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If you use the lead carpenter system, you need to share information with your lead carpenters. Unfortunately, the salesperson or owner doesn't usually give the lead enough time to review project information before actual construction begins.
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Last fall we began collecting data for our Cost of Doing Business Report, which will appear in our March issue. The NAHB research team collected the data but found that they had to spend a lot of time on follow-up calls to clarify the methods companies used to calculate common financial benchmarks...
I no longer fight myself on what I used to perceive to be a character flaw and have come to accept my inability to keep the horizontal surfaces in my office clear.
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In the old days, specific training was almost nonexistent. The production manager would check the jobsite every day or so. Usually there were two carpenters and one or two helpers. Granted, products were simpler to install and less expensive. And companies didn't subcontract much beyond electric...
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Hiring field staff is one of the most important parts of a manager's job — especially in today's tough labor market. Getting the right people in the right jobs is so critical, it cannot be left to chance. Here's a method that one prominent remodeler in Maryland uses to help insure a qualified hire.
As a company grows to where the owner can't personally monitor it day-to-day, week-to-week, or even month-to-month, processes must enable the owner to keep abreast of the business.
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What makes Mazmanian, a certified professional behavior analyst, so certain of the qualities of his client's employees is a combination of experience and tools. He has been working with contractors for 15 years and uses the DiSC, a behavioral profiling tool used since 1945 on about 20 million...
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Microsoft's Project Software helps a lead contractor avoid bottlenecks.
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Houston remodeler Don Strong says the carpet protector he has used for eight years shows his clients that his company is dedicated to protecting their homes. The president of Brothers Strong says the durable plastic sheets last for weeks on the jobsite.