Contractor Cuts
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Contractor Cuts
Time is Money: Mastering Project Timelines
Time slippage is a hidden money drain that costs contracting companies thousands of dollars in lost profit. We reveal how making simple adjustments to project timelines can dramatically increase your bottom line without requiring more work.
• Timeline management is critical for three main reasons: customer satisfaction, crew retention, and company profitability
• Poor timeline control can reduce a contractor's take-home pay from $100,000 to just $40,000 annually on $1 million in revenue
• Efficient contractors who save just 3 days on 3-week projects can boost annual revenue from $1 million to $1.2 million
• The average residential remodeler makes only 4% net profit, making timeline efficiency essential for survival
• Spending 80% of your management time on pre-construction planning prevents costly mid-project delays
• Create detailed Gantt charts during the due diligence phase to organize work sequentially and avoid confusion
• Include specific line items for inspections and client walkthroughs at critical points (framing, pre-drywall)
• Use a formal final walk checklist to create clear separation between project completion and warranty work
• Start with front-end organization and weekly timeline check-ins before implementing more advanced systems
• Efficient timeline management not only increases profits but helps retain quality crews who depend on project flow
If you want to talk with me directly about growth, structure, or implementing these systems, go to ProStruct360.com and schedule a free 30-minute consultation from our contact page.
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Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner.
Speaker 1:And I'm James Edward Norbert.
Speaker 2:McConnell III. Thanks for joining us again this week. So today we are talking about timelines and how to keep jobs on time and this sounds like a boring title but I will. I know I'm bored hidden money drain that a company is going to have. This is a subject where you don't realize until you start scaling how much money you're losing by being inefficient on your timelines. We're going to get into that. Talk about where you lose money, how you lose money and how much money we can actually help you make this year on the same amount of work that you're doing and just by really doing a couple of things differently with timelines tracking, ensuring that we're staying on time and helping. So let's dive deep into that.
Speaker 2:It's a critical role on staying on schedule and there's really kind of three different reasons why. The first and foremost reason is customer satisfaction, hitting their expectations. We told them when we'd be done. They're expecting, they're planning on decorating. I got family coming in town, I got this happening, and and we slip a week or two weeks or three weeks and then all of a sudden they're pissed off. They got to change their entire vacation plans. They're like they got to get an airbnb, yeah, and and it's all of a sudden, even if it wasn't quote, unquote your fault, you're 100 to blame. So your reputation gets the hit. You get that review that's a negative on Google. You get really the the. The client relationship gets like I can't tell them one thing that's not a hundred percent positive, or they're going to be mad at me, even if it has zero, zero to do with me. Um, so I think that's number one. Saving your reputation is staying online or on your timeline to stay there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, number two my crews. Right, if I'm paying a crew $5,000, you know I'm paying a guy five grand to do two weeks worth of work and we turn two weeks into two and a half weeks. It's the same amount of work. He just was less efficient. I wasn't, you know, giving the right feedback he needed along the way. Maybe he had to wait a couple of days to get the right tile there.
Speaker 2:Whatever, it is changing a crew from a two-week job that leaks into two and a half weeks that's a half a week that they're not making more money. They're on a work order for five grand for two weeks and all of a sudden now they're working for two and a half weeks and because we're not paying daily. They're getting hurt by that, and so it might be their fault as well. But my job as a project manager is to help motivate them, push them and hold a mirror up to them, saying hey, you've gone to Home Depot five times every single day.
Speaker 2:Look at you, look at who you are, would you just look at you? But why don't? Let's let me help coach you on. Every day, before you leave the job site, let's take a materials list for what you need tomorrow and then, on the way in, let's hit Home Depot and then you'll get to the job site and you don't need to go five times to go get a pack of screws and then the next time to go get a paintbrush, and the next time to go get just small things that you're on, whatever you're working on right now. Sundries, sundries, sundries, home.
Speaker 1:Depot buckets, coca-cola's yeah, that's where those always kind of that's. The weird thing to me is when there's like a big order yeah, there's just a big order. It's, you know, $2,000 of lumber tile or whatever yeah, but it's when they went to go grab a pack of screws and that's when they're like, oh, but we also need a paintbrush and a couple of snicker bars, yeah, yeah, it's like you don't have a paintbrush in that truck.
Speaker 2:I don't believe you. And also like when we were putting in the order for the sheetrock, I put it in order for screws. Well, I also needed this type of screw. Why don't you tell me that I would have thrown it in the order and it'd be delivered to you right and so helping your crew get efficient to stay on timeline, as well as, even if I my inefficiencies as a project manager.
Speaker 2:Not keeping us on on time is hurting the crew. And when I have a crew that wants to make 2,500 a week and I've got 5,000 for two weeks, they're happy. I get them on the next job, they're happy and they're staying with me. They're're making making my clients happy. If I turn a two week job into a three week job, that third week, they're not getting paid anything. And so the instead of making 10 grand for the crew that month, now their availability is 7,500. So they're short for paying their guys and help and their overhead. So it's a. It's a real slippage in in not only my time and efficiency, which we'll talk about next, but I'm hurting my crews. I'm going to lose the good ones because they're like hey, I'm not making enough working here, so I got to go, and so the ability to get your crews to work for cheaper is based on hitting your timelines and being really efficient with your time, and also going back to the slippage on the calendar.
Speaker 1:slippage on the calendar yeah, this is where a lot of you can't charge a change order because weather happened. You can't charge a change order because something's taking too long, but there's all sorts of things where the client didn't have something for you, or they haven't made a decision, or they were going to supply a certain material and comes to pass and that's the wrong material. We need to return it and yada, yada, yada. Guys don't charge for change orders for that kind of stuff very regularly and neither neither do I. Yeah, but that's where it's.
Speaker 1:You need to make sure that clients are aware when they have extended the timeline, if nothing else but for the relationship, because when they, when you get to the end of the project or you're getting close to the end and they're like we're two weeks beyond, you know whatever, at that point you coming and saying well, do you remember three weeks ago, when you didn't have the right tile and we had to go return, that we lost two days, basically for that whole scenario? Do you remember, when you said you didn't have the right tile and we had to go return, that we lost two days, basically for that whole scenario. Do you remember when you said you didn't want anybody there Thursday, friday, because you were having a birthday party for your son? Yep, when those things happen, you do need to make sure you're keeping a record of that and letting them know. Hey, your timeline's shifting. Yeah, because you're not going to. They can understand it in that moment. Oh, that makes sense. But when it comes at the end of the project, it's like oh, I don't.
Speaker 2:Well, you're making excuses at this point. Yeah, I think one thing that you, we don't I don't ever remember charging for timeline slippage by not having materials. But what I love is we put it in the CEA, so we talk about like we can, and so the cea is written very tight, very uh, with like kind of solid, tight rules, fascist, fascist rules, yeah. And then we're the good guys by saying you know what? I'm not going to charge you for that, just make sure you get them picked by tomorrow and we'll have everything. And you do that. You're like hey, fixing mics over here.
Speaker 1:Uh, but you shoot them a wink.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like hey I got the cool tea I got you, yeah, and, and that way also you're, you're building that trust bucket to where, later, when I got to bring bad news, I had an opportunity to charge you for something that I didn't, so it really helps on that.
Speaker 1:So one thing I like to do for my clients is, when we start a project, I like to come in and I literally have a Home Depot bucket and I've written trust on it, yeah, and I kind of do a visual for them about you.
Speaker 2:you fill it with water and leave it on the job I like to put in physical items so I can be like.
Speaker 1:this is a piece of trust. This is a piece of trust and I kind of do a visual for them Cool.
Speaker 2:And then, like halfway through, when they this is a piece of truck and I kind of do a visual for them Cool. And then, like halfway through, when they, when they like, start hiring yourself out from underneath you, you walk up to the bucket and dump it and I pull the bucket out and they're like, and they rip it out of my hand. They're like stop it with the stupid bucket.
Speaker 2:That's good. So trust bucket, physical trust bucket on job site Write that down. Yeah, do that on every job of money. I think is the main one that we're talking about. You've got your reputation, you've got the crew that's losing money. But money that I am losing is something that, once we started looking at it and as we started scaling up from a one man show, really started becoming evident of where we were losing money. I think.
Speaker 2:A good example let's lay this out in simple terms If a three week job goes over by three days, that's a 20% loss. Everybody knows that percentage. Everybody knows because five days in a week, one day, equals 20% of a week. So if it's three weeks and it goes over three days, it's a 20% loss in available time that I could be on the next job. Vice versa, if I can do a three-week job in two and a half weeks, if I can save three days on the end of that job, I'm gaining 20% more because I can now have three extra days to start the next job and start invoicing.
Speaker 2:And when I'm a one-man show and I'm managing maybe two, three, four jobs at a time or I'm swinging a hammer on one job at a time, it took me an extra couple of days. It's not a big deal. When you start multiplying that and if you're trying to grow to a multimillion-dollar company, that adds up to the bottom line and as you grow, your net profits shrink. According to the Association of Residential Contractors residential remodelers actually the average residential remodeler is a 4% net profit. Right, and so if we're talking a 20% loss that's like is that still the number.
Speaker 2:That's still the number on residential remodelers. We don't go for that. Our aim is way above that and systematically we can do that. That's the reason that most a lot of residential remodelers don't make it, and so our goal is we're looking at a 20% slip overall, not just on that little bit of profit. So it's not 20% of 4%, it's 20% of 100, right, and so that's a big loss. And that's where you either gain momentum and make it as a company. And this is also where guys are like I've been working my butt off and I'm two years in and I'm at the exact same spot that I started, except I'm working harder but making the same amount of money. And this is one of the key hidden things that are causing that. Because I am allowing the slippage, I'm not getting things done. I go back to the job site seven times to get it finished. I can't. That job I was supposed to start this coming Monday is now pushed three weeks to get started and I'm don't have work that's coming in. My revenue is slipping on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, honestly, the probably one of the bigger reasons that timeline slip is because, okay, I've landed the job, we've got the client, they're happy. We've we've done the CEA, we've got the client, they're happy. We've done the CEA, we've set everything up, it's going awesome. On to the next thing. Yep, when really it's not over, the job is. You know, depending on what your role in the company is, we need to make sure that that job continues to run the way we talked about it, that it's going to hit the timelines, to run the way we talked about it, that it's going to hit the timelines.
Speaker 2:So when you shift your focus onto bringing more work in which is not a bad thing, it it kind of defeats the purpose of what you're building If you just let the other thing go most contractors spend the first half of a job kind of focus on that job and the second half of the job focus on the next job, and what we want to do is shift your systems around to where we spend. This isn't lip service. We say we spend 80% of our time, of our of the time that we're spending as GCs on the job before we start, and that's true. That's why we charge a pre-construction line item, because I'm going to spend all the time picking out materials for three months from now I'm going to spend all the time lining up crews building all the time picking out materials. For three months from now I'm going to spend all the time lining up crews building out my Gantt chart. So my electrician knows I need him in three and a half weeks. My cleaning lady knows that I'm a month out from. This is her schedule of what we're doing this month.
Speaker 2:If I can be that organized before we start the job, then I'm just putting out small little fires that come up throughout the job. If I am three weeks into a six week job and now I'm trying to figure out what tile we're doing, we're going to lose time. I need to spend hours on that. I'm trying to organize that. Go, pick up the tile. I'm now a material deliverer because I couldn't put it in my order Right. There's all sorts of things, by not being organized on the front end, that slip the time throughout and steal my time towards the middle and end of the job to where I'm not focused on the other jobs, and so the priority of the last guy that I'm running out of money receiving from is low and the priority of the next person is high because that's new money and then I'm not giving them good service and my reputation goes down. Then they're calling me back 17 times. It's just this like domino effect of not being organized where, if I spend the time before I start, when I'm getting the money and I'm being paid for my time, I'm going to sit up front, plan it all out and then, by the halfway through the job, all I'm doing is maintenance on that job. Guys, I might move the painter three days. The plumber needs to move around. I need to change this. Great, that's all I need to do this week send some emails to the homeowner, keep them updated, swing by the job site Now. I've got three hours today to start building those estimates for the next job, to start looking and following up on my estimates, to really start planning out my pipeline that's coming up. So really, that front end planning phase is what we're going to be diving into, as well as Gantt charts, timelines and how to do that.
Speaker 2:I think a great example when we're talking about that, that can I do a three-week job in two and a half weeks versus a three-week job goes to three weeks and three days. Let's do some round numbers. If I've got a company that's doing a million dollars a year in sales, I'm aiming for 30% profit. Again, that's gross profit. Yeah, that's gross, not net. Before I pay myself expenses, insurance, gas, all that stuff, I should be making $300,000 on the job sites themselves. Now you know, after expenses I might be taking home a third of that. I might have $100,000 that I'm taking home. But on a million dollars a year at 30%, I should clear $, take home about 100, depending on overhead and expenses and whatnot. That being said, if I'm losing one day a week, if I'm making a three-week job into three weeks and three extra days, that mathematically means I'm only going to be able to do $800,000 that year. I can only do $800,000 because I'm losing three days, one day per week, if all your jobs slip.
Speaker 2:They all. If a three week job often turn averages three days over which they, they usually average a little more than that because most guys go, it goes into four weeks and I'll start that job next Monday, and so there's that slippage on the back end so often on these smaller companies. But if I'm doing that, I'm only getting $800,000 worth of work done. That's a $60,000 of profit that I'm losing on that job $60,000. So instead of making $300,000, I'm making $240,000.
Speaker 2:Again, I still got my overhead so I might be making. That's coming out of my pocket, right? I'm going from a hundred grand of final profit that I put in my pocket down to 40 grand, right, like, I'm not making very much money at that point because of that little slippage that I didn't see. Yeah, Now let's swing it the other way. If I can be super efficient, time it out and then get three weeks of work done in two and a half, if I can cut three days off that job, start the next job and get that job running, I'm now invoicing $1.2 million. I've got a 20% increase in my revenue. So at $1.2 million, that's better I like that one.
Speaker 2:Do you have a calculator? I think it's better than $800. Matt, it checks out.
Speaker 2:Okay, matt, it checks out. Okay, so I'm now doing $1.2 million, which then that means I'm making $60,000 of profit if I'm keeping at 30% more than I would have made. Now, if I compare the two, the slippage versus the gain, if you're a guy, that's slipping 20% versus if we can get you efficient to where you're gaining 20%, that's $120,000 of net profit. What you bring home with you put in your pocket, take to the bank $120,000 total that you're taking versus $40,000. Now it's a hundred gap. It's $160,000 total that you'd be taking home. So it's a $120,000 gap from $40,000 you take home by being efficient or being efficient, or 160 that you're taking on by being super efficient. Masser, on 140.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I'm getting lost in it. Uh, 160. Yeah, verse 40. Yeah, you add 60, 160, verse 40. And it's like well, that's not. That doesn't make sense. It does the math. Now you got to stay busy and again, this is an example of it being very efficient with your time, yeah, but you're not lowering your expenses and overhead by slipping on time. You're lowering your take home. Right, it's not like all my costs go down because I invoice a little less. No, you still got rent.
Speaker 1:You still got gas.
Speaker 2:You still got your overhead. You still got like all of that stuff is getting paid, and so what it comes out of is your pocket.
Speaker 1:So I'm not taking a hundred grand home, I've taken 40. Yeah, your resources are not increasing.
Speaker 2:Your expenditures are every day that goes past and taking $40,000 home at the end of the year. That ain't going to fly.
Speaker 2:But on a million dollars, that's your 4%, that's a 4% for the residential contractor, it's 40,000 on a million, right, and so that is very rough. And so let's stop making 40,000 at the end of the year, let's start making 160,000. Like that's the goal and that's the efficiency. Is that deal? Is that okay Deal? But honestly, like that's what the coaching program is all about, that's how I justify the cost of coaching is like if I can make you half of that efficiency, you're tripling your investment in hiring coach and following our systems and processes. So again, that is why this matters so much. People don't do that math or see a big picture and when you're doing one or two jobs, it's a couple extra days. It is what it is.
Speaker 2:When you scale and you want to get to $2 million, $5 million, $10 million a year, that percentage is huge. You go to $2 million and it's not a $60,000 difference, that's $120,000. You go to $3 million, it's $180,000 extra, and so it scales with you. But also, the more inefficient you are, your expenses scale up and so your profit is dropping. On a $500,000 a year company, they take home about 21%. By the time you get to $5 to $6 million, you're taking home about 8% if you're doing it well, 4% according to the industry standard, and so there is a slippage of profit that is built in and baked into growing a company that, as guys grow, it puts them out of business.
Speaker 2:Right, we've learned that the hard way in terms of how we set it up in Atlanta and how we're doing in Atlanta in our first location, is we were built the wrong way because we started it in 2006 with the wrong foundation. Yeah, so again, that's that's why this is so important, and so let's let's kind of dive into how to start making yourself more efficient. Just wanted to kind of lay out why it's important, cause I think guys don't. Three days, is that's not not not a big deal?
Speaker 1:Especially if you're not getting hounded by the client.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, and a lot of guys get to the end of the job, they don't have the next job lined up because they weren't efficient during that job. They weren't lining up their pipe, they weren't doing the process stuff that we need to do to run a company. They're just. I enjoy talking with the customer. I throw my tool belt on, sometimes help with my crews on site. I love doing trim work. So I'm going to show up and do some trim work for the final punch out list and then all of a sudden I don't have the next job lined up, so who cares if I stayed here an extra three days?
Speaker 2:So it's about getting your pipeline built, having the next job ready, being super efficient and organized with the timeline so we can start the next one on time, all right. So how do we do this? What are the key points that we can do to get efficient with that time? Number one what are the key points that we can do to get efficient with that time? Number one how? How do you, james, why don't you dive into how you do this? When and how do you plan out your timeline and how early Cause you know someone gives you, you build an estimate for someone. You don't want to spend an hour and a half building out a Gantt chart for the job, but at the same time I want to get that to them and start planning out my job. At what point do you do that, and do you make it perfect the first time, or is it kind of, as the job gets deeper, you're refining it? Kind of walk us through that.
Speaker 1:So this is a personal thing for me, the way that our Gantt charts are in the software every I try and put every line item in order, and so that might mean when I'm and this is going in a little bit deeper than I was anticipating but if you are doing uh, if you're doing floors and you're doing trim, uh, and you're painting the house, let's say you're painting the house, you're doing the baseboards and you're doing floors, I'm going to put in order that I'm doing my, I'm going to, I'm going to paint, I'm going to do my baseboards and I'm going to have a separate line item for painting baseboards. That follows below Because when I'm doing my timeline, I want, I don't want there to be a time block in the middle and there'd be items here and items here. But this is happening over here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, three weeks of paint, but it's really four days up front and one day at the end two days at the end.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to break things out to make sure that I'm keeping my timeline to where it's running like this yeah, if that makes sense. Yeah, so that's number one, where the skill's down, where the top line isn't at the end of the job. Yes, and so that's the first thing is setting it up like that. So I know I'm not going to confuse myself when I'm looking at my timeline and miss that thing. Oh, we don't. We haven't even scheduled this guy because I forgot he was there. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:You're kind of just wherever the timeline is that we're on. That's what. Those are the next couple lines I'm looking at, because I don't have to worry about eight lines up. That's already completed.
Speaker 1:Right. So that's the first thing and I won't even start to engage with a timeline, like actually building out a timeline, until due diligence. At that point we're meeting with the guys, we're talking to them about their calendars and we're getting it all set up. So the big, the big push for the Gantt chart is during due diligence, as you're meeting with crews and you're going to map out your timeline from there. The client's going to ask you ahead of time hey, what, how long is this going to take? And yada, yada, yada. You can give them a rough idea and you might even you might even have your, your scope kind of built and you can kind of roughly give an estimate. But I wouldn't start actually putting time blocks in until you're in due diligence.
Speaker 2:And that's also a carrot that helps sell the due diligence period Like hey, I can you know we're we're looking three to four months on this. I honestly need to spend about two hours building out a Gantt chart for you and kind of laying out every single trade, figuring out when and how they're going to do it. By the end of due diligence though, I will have an exact date on your calendar of when I believe we're going to be done. Yeah, and so you can say that that's why you're paying me for due diligence is I'm going to organize this whole job before we start.
Speaker 2:Most contractors do it from the hip as we go along and that's how they time slippage, but I bring the customer into this of like listen, if I work two extra weeks on this job, I'm not going to invoice you more, so that's losing me money. So for me, I'm going to get this super efficient on the front end, plan out a Gantt chart, show it to you and make sure that we're on the same page as the what and when and how, and then that's that's what you're paying me for for due diligence. As part of the package of the due diligence is that organization so you can plan your life around it. Yeah Um the.
Speaker 1:The next thing that I'm looking at is, uh, your gap days. So, like our guys don't typically work Saturday, sunday, they might if they you, they might if they're behind or if they just want to work, but I don't typically account for those days. So if I'm on my Gantt chart and I can't remember if there's a function to actually take those away or not, but I just run over those days, not a problem. But there's certain benchmarks that you want to make sure that you're keeping in your actual Gantt chart. Yeah, at least for me, when you're doing a permitted job, it's pretty easy. You know that where the inspections are going to fall and where, uh, where you're going to have those, nobody can be working here. We need to get this inspected before we can continue, and I always budget for, you know, three or four days for that, because there might be a, there might be a failure that needs to be addressed. Uh, depending on the county or the city, it might take them two days to get out once you submit it.
Speaker 2:So there's some, there's some stuff like that that you need to account for, and that's something I learned from you looking at your estimates and I think one of our PMs was so like black and white and down to the second planning is that he didn't have those buffer days and so the inspections killed him. Because he had an inspector, we'd fail. We need to fix one little thing. They'd come back two days later finally get past, and so we lost three to four days on it. He didn't budget for that Right, and so one thing that you've done that I love, that I coach guys on now that I've stolen from you is we add a line item, I'll pay you $10 for this idea.
Speaker 2:You build line items for an inspection hey, plumbing inspection and it's a $0 line item but it's separated out from everything else. So, one, I can assign it to my project manager. And two, he can mark it complete once we pass that inspection. So me, customer, everyone complete once we pass that inspection. So me, customer, everyone can see we pass that. And three, it's now on the Gantt chart. It's its own separate line that I can say okay, here's when the inspection is going to happen.
Speaker 2:And once you get to a spot where you're a GM and managing a PM, you sit in that once a week meeting for your pal meeting on Friday, and look, say once a week meeting for your pal meeting on friday, and look, say hey, let's look, it looks like you have an inspection next wednesday. Are we on time? Have you called it in? Have you done this? And it helps get that second set of eyes like oh crap, no, we're not going to be ready for that. Okay, well, let's rearrange your gantt chart right now before we go. Yeah, let's let the customer know and let's get ready for that inspection to be on thursday instead of wednesday. And it allows you to get ahead of that fire instead of behind the fire, where it catches fire on that Wednesday, where it's like, oh crap, guys, sheetrock's starting on Friday and I haven't even called my inspection yet, so anyways.
Speaker 1:When you're not doing a permitted job. I always like to make sure that there are still benchmarks in there, and these are really some of. This is CYA, Like you bring in the guys after framing, before you sheet rock, before you start running electrical, before you start running plumbing, and you walk the client through and you put that in there. Framing, framing, walk as one of your line items to make sure that the client walks in there. They see the space, they see how far the the wall is from where the toilet's going to be. You could even, you know, spray paint on the ground or put tape on the ground, whatever. Squat right here, Squat here, how does it feel? Can you reach the toilet paper? Just so that they know like there might be. Hey, this is where your vanity light is going to sit, this is where your shower head is going to sit.
Speaker 2:Walk them through those things before, before Sheet rocks up, before they've drilled a bunch of holes through all the lumber when they come in and say can we move this wall six inches after the sheet rocks up and we've passed all our inspections and electricals in and the installations and like we can, it's going to cost like I can't charge you enough to charge you the losses that I'm going to get. Take on not starting the next job because we're losing two to three weeks now. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I like to make sure I put in benchmarks like that. So framing's a good one, sheet rocks a good one. I would even say you know, have them, let them get the first coat of paint on sheet rock before the client walks and says what they're happy with or not, because you can't really see it very well, you can't see the maladies in it very well I do one for electrical and plumbing together, where it's like this is where your switches are, and this is also like standing in your kitchen.
Speaker 2:This is where your sink's going to be. We can move it six inches right now. We haven't finalized a cabinet layout totally, but we're locked into where the sink's going to go. Yeah, right that those sort of things that I can move that pex six inches easily right now. Once we put put the cabinets in and you don't like it, tough, you're just going to be unhappy with your kitchen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, A good. I mean, that's just a good rule of thumb If, if you know that there's this specific trade or this part of the project that is going to lock you in, that is going to make every change order for this, for this aspect, magnitudes more expensive than it would be if we fixed it now. That's a good spot for a benchmark walk with the client.
Speaker 2:Yeah uh, my favorite was figuring out like I I like to eliminate light switches as much as possible and I think a lot of electricians just throw them where it's convenient for them and for me that's kind of an art of how and where to put, you know, double switches and everything else of like. If you can lay that out with your customer and show them the care and concern that you're having for you know, when you wake up in the morning you're going to actually enter this room from this direction. So what if we put a switch here instead of over there? Even though it makes sense, standard, it would be right. Going through those details not only is eliminating frustration and cost later, but also showing your value to the customer where they're like oh this guy's on top of it, man Building that trust bucket, we're filling that bucket. So planning out those on the Gantt chart and on the timeline, really pre-planning that stuff is what what you do to to get efficient, and not only that, but it really tees you up for, uh, delay and change order conversations.
Speaker 1:So you're walking there with them and they say, oh, I do, let's, let's move this, let's adjust this. Okay, well, this is the way that we talked about doing it for me to get these guys to adjust that. It's going to be a couple hundred bucks. Here we're going to lose two days. We got to go to home depot, we got to get the material, we got to demo this. They got to redo it and then we need to walk it again to make sure you're happy with it. Yeah, so that's going to give us another three days.
Speaker 1:On the timeline, change orders gonna be this much. Does that sound like appropriate? Yeah, it tees you up to have that conversation. And now they know not only are they going to be receiving a change order from you, but the timeline has changed and that's something they're going to receive that updated timeline. So when you get to the end of the project and they look back and they say, well, you said at the beginning that we were going to be done by June, say I did. And then we had this meeting. We had this meeting and it there's not a. There's not a, he said. She said you have all of the communication, you have the the these. These are the four different Gantt charts that we've worked with the past two months.
Speaker 2:Remember that email where you didn't pick out your refinish hardwood color and I told you that the hardwood guys had another job so they had to go do that and it delayed it a week, yeah that's the big one.
Speaker 1:That's the really big one is a lot of us don't own our crew's time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if I have to push them, especially those one-off tradies. I mean, I'm not keeping a hardwood refinisher busy, right.
Speaker 1:And so if I push his timeline two days, that doesn't mean that he's just sitting on his thumbs. Timeline two days, that doesn't mean that he doesn't he's just sitting on his thumbs, he's, hopefully he's. He's got other work going on, so we push him two days. I can't just go get another flooring. I'm already locked in with this guy. He's walked the project, we got the quote, we're ready to go Materials on site. He might've even done something already.
Speaker 2:That we have to pay for. If you can go find a trade professional that can start tomorrow, you should not hire him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a trade professional that can start tomorrow you should not hire him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, like, if I can go find another guy to come replace them, that can start tomorrow. That's a huge red flag. Do you do floors? Sure, yeah, yeah I do I do siding and floors and dumpsters?
Speaker 1:I do siding floors and dumpsters and hardscapes. But yeah, those, those tend to blow up timelines because you're, like this guy's, now five days out, so the two-day hiatus turns into seven days because the client made a call. They're not going to see that or understand that their decision has affected their timeline for seven days, unless you walk them through that. Yeah, and it's going to be annoying because if you have a client making a lot of changes, they're going to feel like you're screwing them and nickel and diming them, and so you've got to find a way to be able to have that conversation it's the advocacy side, too, where it's like ah, yeah, why?
Speaker 2:like, oh man, this is why I wanted those Selections by yesterday. Because, ah, and so it's like I'm frustrated for you that you're losing time and money on your job and that we are going To delay the job Because you didn't Pick something out. Yeah, where it's. It's the same thing Of being like, well, that's your fault. I was like oh, that sucks. I hate that this is happening to us. Oh man.
Speaker 1:Oh, man, we are so bummed both of us.
Speaker 2:Oh golly, this is going to ruin both of our summers. We are both upset about this.
Speaker 1:I might be more upset than you.
Speaker 2:The other thing I've caught when I'm planning out these walks and one note about planned out walks with the client as a GC and a contractor, that's moving from being on site swinging a hammer to in the truck. When you're on site, that naturally happens. I'm there five days a week, all day, and so when the customer shows up, I kind of show them what we framed and what we did and like this looks like this, and so that naturally happens. So you don't think about it when you're stepping out of the truck and I'm there two to three days to actually have planned meetings for that. And so one thing that I've seen with a lot of guys making that transition is we got to harp on building in those line items number one and number two. Not only are we catching to save, like oh, I don't like, these walls are too close. I'm glad we're checking it now. Yes, send me the change order for moving the walls out six inches. I've caught a lot of errors that we've made Like but, clark, I think we wanted the closet on the other side. Oh, you're right. Well, it's going to cost me a couple hundred bucks to reframe the closet down the wall on the other side of the wall. Yeah, where, if it's way down the road sheet rocks in. We finished it, we've got the electrical ran, we passed. And then they're like Clark, we had the closet over here. I mean, I'm looking at $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 worth of work at that point to change it. Yeah, it's hella more expensive. You are right, james Hella. So those milestone and checkpoints to have those key meetings are again.
Speaker 2:You don't think about it. You think like, ah, that's fine, I might throw some in. This is where we save money. You think like, ah, that's fine, I might throw some in. This is where we save money. This is where we get efficient and this is where the larger companies and the companies making money. They do it this way. This is how you do it. And when you're like, well, I'm just a one-off guy, yeah, you're never going to get there unless you start building that foundation to get you there and so start doing some of these things.
Speaker 2:The next thing is you kind of covered some of these are adjusting with the delays. How am I communicating that? How am I doing change orders? How am I rebuilding? You kind of covered all of that in the last note.
Speaker 2:But talking about how we're talking with the customer where we are revising the Gantt chart and sending them a new one, right? That's something that I think is great about having accountability, whether it's a coach or a general manager in the company. That's like hey, I'm looking, your timeline doesn't match with your completion date. What's going on? What's happening? Well, that job, they actually this. Okay, well, rebuild that. Let's send. Copy me on the email. I want to see you send it to the customer. Let's make sure that that customer's updated with that timeline, because it's easy to explain one week lost, three months away. It's very difficult when they think their job's done and it's Monday and they think Friday's the last day and we've got a whole other week. They've planned parties, they've planned other things, they've planned their move-in, they've got the delivery truck coming. Let's try and get ahead of that to where there's not anger with it but like, oh, that makes sense, I remember that we talked about that right now. Like, oh, that makes sense, right, I remember that we talked about that right now.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, I think one piece of documentation that we have that we give every person in our coaching system is our final walk checklist, and it's something we created eight, nine, 10 years ago and we still use it to this day in terms of it is a two page front back. This is what we do. This is how we do a final walk. We talk about it in the client engagement agreement. This is how we exit a job. You fill out this page. We're going to talk about and do a 95% walk on the property. Look at every issue that you've got on it. We're going to look at that.
Speaker 2:That paint trip I see over there and I'm leading this walk to pick apart the job. If I find three things, that's going to make the client feel like, oh, clark's in it, to make the job nice, not get out of here. And it also avoids them saying I want the whole room repainted. If I'm like, hey, there's a paint trip right there, I'm going to repaint this wall, they're like, okay, cool, just that wall. Okay, we got that Right. And so I'm leading that conversation. We're both picking things out wrong, writing down the list, and then I said, okay, so if we get all this stuff, we're good to go, I can pay my crews, you'll give the final invoice and we're out of your hair. Does that sound good? Yes, absolutely. And so I've now got a target to complete, as long as we don't poke a hole in another wall while we're doing it.
Speaker 2:They've committed that this is our punch out to get out of here Now. If they have an issue next week like, hey, actually this other thing's you forgot to put trim on the back corner of the door, whatever it is, I'm gonna come back out and fix it. But this allows us to say listen, anything after this. If I gotta come back out, I gotta pay guys more, because this is releasing them from the job and so if we don't capture it here, it's costing me a lot of money to come back. So help me capture everything, because I want to make sure that we get out of your hair and we're done Right, and so we might come back once. But for the most part it gets the the homeowner's brain thinking you know, I did sign off on that and that's honestly. It's a paint drip on the top of a closet in a guest bedroom. I'm not gonna, that's fine, I already signed off on this.
Speaker 1:And I think there's there's probably people listening that are like you know, that gives them pause, like how a client, if I tell a client, hey, beyond this, I'm not coming back out, feels like the client's gonna be like, no, you're gonna. You have a one-year warranty, you're gonna finish everything and when I have an issue, you're gonna fix it. Yeah, but that's not how anybody's responded to me. When we've talked about it, I walk through hey, this is our final punch checklist, this is how we do it. And I say at the end I'm like the reason that we do this is we need to have some type of uh line of demarcation to where we're not coming back out to fix things that we missed in our final walk.
Speaker 1:That doesn't mean that if your sink is dripping, like that's not functioning as it should, that needs to be fixed. That's a warranty item. The drip on the baseboard in the left corner of the living room is no longer covered under a. Well, I'm not going to come back in two weeks and have somebody fix that, because we need to catch that on the final law. Yeah, but, like you said, they might call back with something random and great yeah, we'll come and fix that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be the good guy at that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they know that I'm doing them a solid at that point. Yes, because their posture is different, like hey, I know that we did this, would you?
Speaker 2:mind.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I've got somebody out there next week. I've got somebody actually working. Oh awesome, I'll just swing by.
Speaker 2:Perfect, I'll do that. I think also I've had the conversation at that point where it gets a little sticky of the difference of go back and finishing work and warranty, of the difference of go back and finishing work and warranty. And so warranty work and I've explained this to the customer is warranty. Work is after you've paid for stuff. We come back and fix what broke from the time you paid me. So if you paid me today and that's final, and you signed off and we look good, we're out of here, and then the sink starts dripping, that's warranty. It started after that cutoff and you've already paid. Now if you don't pay me my final invoice and just keep calling me back out here, that's not warranty, that's not. I've got a warranty on the stuff that's paid for. That's breaks after we've installed it. So if the quality of work is more of this final walk and making sure that everything is is is buttoned up, as well as anything that not working right now. But after we sign off on this, that's that's you saying hey, y'all are released, y'all are good to go, here's your final check and I want that spot to where you can relax in your house and unpack yourself. Right. We're making the customer, the main, the main character in the conversation, right, I want you to be able to unpack your stuff, not have to worry about my guys coming back and painting drips on your couch, like let's have a date, pick apart the house, let's walk through it and then let's have a date. If I get all this stuff done, I hand the keys back to you, I take the lockbox off and we are good to go, and that at that point your warranty started, right, and so having that conversation, practicing it and not being scared to explain just how things work in a kind way, don't be?
Speaker 2:I think a lot of guys get defense Like I'm not coming back out. Yeah, I mean, if there's a warranty, you are. Yeah, I mean, if it's a warranty, right, and it's all about thinking about how they're going to perceive it and what they're going to hear when not with with what I'm saying. Yeah, and so it's like this you pay me, I do, I warranty everything. Yeah, right. So I think wrapping this, this podcast, up, the the key thing that you can start doing today. This is kind of overwhelming to do. Also, you want to do gantt charts and walks and final punch and all like there's a lot here and this is kind of why, on the coaching program, we got that 280 point checklist that we walk through bite by bite. Let's not do all of this like when I start.
Speaker 2:Guys in the coaching, they start with the client engagement agreement and the subcontractor agreement. Once we get those down, memorize, edited, built for you, used a couple of times on board the vendors, then we go into the final walk checklist. That's one of the first papers that we start with. But once then we start learning one thing at a time. And so what I'd say to you systematically, if you can do one thing different today, we're going to start building due diligence line items and build out, prioritizing the front end pre-construction. To plan out as far as you can, as much as you can. Try to build a Gantt chart, even if you're not giving it to your customer, even if you're doing it on a scrap piece of paper. Try to build out who's doing what when, to lay out a timeline that you're going to try to follow on the job. And then the second thing you do is I want to weekly focus on that timeline, because a lot of guys like think about it up front and then they just go and they're just getting guys and they don't really think about it. I want a time block every Friday from seven to eight. Before you get going, sit down, I'm going to look open every job in the software and I'm going to look at. You know, we have a set list I want you to look at in there. But what are we doing timeline wise? Are we on track to get this done? What can I do to get this job closer to the finish line this morning? Uh, and so I'm looking at it there. If I'm doing those two things the front end organization and a weekly check-in on timeline two things, the front end organization and a weekly check-in on timeline A lot of this stuff goes away and these other things that we've talked about.
Speaker 2:We can start plugging in as you grow, but just start somewhere. You can't, you can't do all of this tomorrow if you haven't done any of it yet. But let's start somewhere and start taking those bite-sized pieces towards growth and structure. So if you want to talk with me directly about growth, structure, implementing this stuff, our paperwork, anything else, go to ProStruck360.com, go to the contact us and you have my calendar on there that you can sign up for a meeting with me.
Speaker 2:Our base level of coaching is our foundations program. It's kind of a launch into coaching that you can just start there. It starts at 500 bucks, so it's super cheap to get going, get our paperwork, get that sort of thing and get locked in for the amount of growth that you're going to get. So if you want to hear it, we'd love to meet with you. I'd love to have a free phone call for 30 minutes and kind of hear about your company, tell you about what we can do and see if we're a fit. Thanks so much for listening and we will see you next week. Bye, bye, thank you.
