Greg: On this episode of The Tim Faller Show, we’ll be getting a jump on getting numbers right review by project managers with Margaret Cormode , program manager and Josh Radford. Estimator of Mac renovations in Victoria, British Columbia. Here is the Tim Faller Show.

Tim: Hey everybody, Tim Faller here. And welcome to the Tim Faller Show. So like I always do, I tell you, if you’ve got ideas for the program that you’d like to hear some guests on or even here, Greg, in my opinion on it, you know, send us an email, Tim, at remodelers advantage.com or Greg at Remodelers advantage.com. And we’ll see what we can do about get Matt on.

Tim: And just to prove that we do listen to people when they write in. Today’s episode was written to us by one of our listeners to ask us about this topic of how do you get project managers and or lead carpenters engaged in that upfront process of estimating and review in a way that really works for, the company.

Tim: And so I reached out to all of my contacts and the production manager roundtables, which, just by the way out there, we have some slots open on that. And if you’re interested in that, get in touch with Greg. He’s managing that process now again Greg at Remodelers advantage.com. So we’ve got some slots open. And then our guests got back to is actually one of their staff members.

Tim: Volunteered them to be on the show with us today. And so, we’re glad to have them. So I know this is going on all over the country to varying degrees. Now, in some companies, jobs are just sold. There is no review until after the project is sold. In other words, there is a review before the signing. But what I’ve seen in many companies, there’s just not enough time.

Tim: It’s like, here, look at this real quick while we’re, get ready and tell me if you think it works and almost everybody goes, it works. And then later on they find out it didn’t work. And then in other companies. And this is what I experience a lot in consulting with companies, I’ll ask if the project managers, the league carpenters get a chance to review the project and they’ll look kind of sheepish and they’ll look down to the ground.

Tim: They they say, you know, they tell us to, but we never seem to have enough time. And so they they don’t get it done because they’re so busy. And then when they try to get it done, it’s a little bit too late. So there’s a lot of challenges to getting this done and getting it done. Well, now, some of the other challenges, aside from the production side, is that in many cases, the sales development team will just shut it down right away because they’re so afraid one of the production guys will go like ten grand for framing, winning 50 grand and then what?

Tim: It’s shot out of the water and we can’t sell that thing. And so by the time we add a couple of thousand dollars here and there, and then we add our markup to it, we’re trying to sell a product that we don’t feel comfortable with, and then production feels like their hands are tied. And so in some cases they just go like, what’s the bother.

Tim: So we’re hoping today or we’re going to hear some real boots on the ground information. I know the company we’re speaking with, this has been a product progressive thing for them. they’ve been working on it. they feel like they’ve got some good things going. But I’ve got this funny feeling that this isn’t the end of the development for them.

Tim: They’ll keep on working on it. So, Greg, let’s get started.

Greg: All right. Thanks, Tim. Margaret Cormode joined Macro Innovations in 2015 as a project manager, when the company was 23 people strong. Now she is the program manager and there are over 50 employees. She owned the development of the value chain documentation, which included the development of Standard Operating procedures and an operations manual. She loves processes. Josh Radford has been with Mac renovations for about eight months now.

Greg: Part of his role with the company involves creating systems that helps to bridge the gap between the preconstruction and production departments. Some recent improvements has led to a better understanding of the project as a whole, reducing schedule slippage and strengthen the relationship between the Preconstruction. Estimating sales in the production teams. It’s all yours, Tim.

Tim: Hey, welcome to the show, guys.

Greg: Thank you for having us Tim.

Margaret: Thanks so much. Happy to be here.

Tim: This is great. So Margaret, just give us a little bit more about Mac construction. Just maybe the volume that you’re doing. We know you’ve got a lot of employees compared to a lot of our listeners, but what volume are you doing? And maybe a little bit about the process be like, do you have project managers and lead carpenters or what’s the setup?

Margaret: Yeah, we our volume, we hit around 14 to 16 million.

Margaret: We’re, matrix companies. So we have department heads of various different departments. and, our sales, production, are meeting in the middle through the estimating process. We do have live carpenters. They report directly to our production manager, as do our project management team.

Tim: All right, we’re going to have to explore this, matrix company thing, Greg, because I think that’s a new term, for me. I know, you know, Kiona Reed’s on the matrix and, you know, that kind of thing, but I. I haven’t heard it. So what does that mean, Margaret? The matrix company.

Margaret: Yeah, means that our teams report to multiple leaders, and then we form a leadership group where we discuss all the issues. Okay. In our situation, our project managers have a very balanced authority with their department head, which is really efficient for moving information. However, when we step out of process, which we are encouraged to do when it makes sense, what you can’t manage sometimes are the decisions that are made.

Margaret: Are they the right decisions? Because we do give a lot of autonomy to those decisions along the way. And then we sometimes find out they were good or they weren’t okay. Yeah, but you learn that way too. So yeah, you know.

Tim: What I know, Greg, I will admit it, and I certainly admit it. I sure have learned a lot from mistakes that I’ve made, both on somebody else’s behalf. Like I work for a company and on my own behalf. I was working for myself and made some serious mistakes. So Josh, give us jump in here a little bit and, maybe give us a little bit of a picture of the history of how, these changes that we’re going to get into in detail all have come about and maybe a little bit about what caused the shift in thinking what caused the change.

Greg: Yeah. For sure. Well, historically, we’ve basically had our sales people doing all the estimating. They were wearing both the sales hat and the estimating hat, and that’s a lot to take on. Yeah. and it, it makes it difficult to have refined numbers and to manage all those things at one time. So that was really where we identified if we want to grow sustainably, we need to maybe separate these hats and start creating a system that allows the salespeople to do what they do best, which is sales, and have another team to work on.

Greg: The numbers portion.

Tim: Yeah, I think growth is, one of the major factors. I’m pretty sure that the company that wrote in for this podcast is somewhat smaller than than new or maybe even smaller than when Margaret joined the company. But at the same time, this is something that that Matt Construction has gotten to over a number of years. They’ve grown.

Tim: And what I see almost entirely in the industry is that if you try to stay with a model that does great at 5 million, you’re not going to make it to ten. You’ve got to adapt, you’ve got to move. It’s got to change some things.

Margaret: Stretch.

Tim: Yeah. And this is one of the things that quite often happens, is taking some of those roles away from the folks that that, have it and giving it to somebody else, developing teams that, as it were.

Margaret: So hard to say.

Tim: How did this idea get started? What, because you’ve been there a lot longer than Josh, and you may have. You have a little more history of like, what was some of the confusion? You know, who was the first person that said, wait a minute, stop, we’ve got to do something here. You know what? What’s the what’s what happened there?

Margaret: Yeah. well, it’s been in the the thought process for quite some time. it really was about sustainable growth and, having a view to, becoming more efficient. Objectivity is one of the hardest parts in sales to sell. numbers. So whether you’re a small company, a large company, having that objectivity piece, a part of the estimating is really, really important.

Margaret: and the pandemic actually is what had us go paperless in a month, something that we’ve been planning as this big yearlong thing. And, we charted out our project life cycle. we do we we hired a woman from Boston, virtually. We wrote on paper what we already do, but we formalized that. And I gave every one of you to how the systems flow and how you interact with each other.

Margaret: They’ve had a secondary refinement since that time, especially as some of our seats get filled. So it’s almost like the if you plan it, they will come. And that sort of feels how it evolves organically a bit, but also with a lot of traction. There’s a lot of company culture and language around our swim lanes, we call it, or our value chain.

Margaret: and so when you can see it and you can see where you sit in that piece, we were it was easier to refine some of the low hanging fruit over the years. And so now we’re digging into, you know, this issue in particular has had a lot of traction, since Josh started with the company, too.

Margaret: And it’s it’s seem to be getting pretty good buy in for sure. That’s sort of the it’s been around for a long time, but again, just allows that through the vision of where are we in ten years? We have annual meetings with our leadership company. We’re always looking ahead, planning a year ahead, a three year and a ten year plan.

Margaret: So, yeah, that’s that’s how we got to as far as we we have so far.

Greg: And if I may add, I think it just expands upon one of our core values, which is collaboration. So it’s just a natural progression of starting to add more people into this overall contract and estimate, process to just refine it and make it even better. Yeah.

Tim: So if you grow any more, you’re going to have total domination of Victoria because it’s not that big a place. there’s.

Margaret: No stock here.

Tim: So, so, Margaret, maybe I know you’ve worked a lot with sales and, you know, the processes and stuff, and I mentioned in the intro that, you know, very often the sales team box at this kind of thing, and maybe because the core values there of collaboration. But was there was it a real challenge for you to get the sales team thinking in terms of making sure that the product was ready to go at the right price with, or allowing someone else to kind of stick their nose in there.

Margaret: Yeah, I mean, Josh can speak probably a little better to this, I would say up front, it almost like it wasn’t really a permission granted. It’s like, here’s the direction we’re going. Okay. And then Josh really established the trust along the way and also having a few little jobs to execute. But yeah, yeah.

Greg: I think there was a little bit of resistance to him, especially on the back side of the amount of extra time that it might take to loop more people into the process. And that’s understandable. The sales people, they pick up the lead, they work hard on trying to secure a sale, and the last thing they want is to extend the timeline and risk the possibility of a contract not being signed.

Greg: Right. But on the flip side, it was, you know, here’s the value that we can provide. We can refine this scope, we can refine the numbers, even better, and we can hopefully extract even more value for the customer, but also for ourselves.

Margaret: And having a strong contract to execute alongside a strong estimate is, in our mind, just a recipe for success and low risk. Yeah, you can really, you know, get in there and yeah, yeah.

Tim: So expand on that a little bit Margaret. What do you mean? it’s it’s lowers the risk when you, when you talk about that is the review. and I want to ask Josh in a second, like give us the process, walk us through the process. So maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but Margaret, is the review the whole deal like the contract, the specifications, the the budget, you know, all of that stuff so that the field team has the opportunity to give feedback on all of that?

Margaret: Yeah, we call it a peer review. it’s still in somewhat a refinement, but essentially the the contract, the estimate, the scope and all the contract documents, the team comes together virtually, comes prepared. you’re looking for ambiguity. You’re looking for any little changes. You’re looking for anything that if you had to execute the contract.

Margaret: Do I have enough information here? Is it clear enough to the customer?

Greg: yeah. And I think the peer review is really that last guard, that last step for all of us to come together and make sure we haven’t missed anything at this point in the process. We’ve already worked together, collaborating collaboratively as a team, and we’ve built this together. Okay, right. So it’s the last pass, but we’re reviewing the contract, reviewing the estimate.

Greg: We’re making sure all of our T’s are crossed. Here’s a dotted.

Tim: Yeah okay. So back us up Josh a little bit here. When does production get involved initially. And who who and this is before that peer review I’ll see. And so when do they get involved and what’s the purpose. What’s the I guess just walk us through the first time production gets involved in that and then all the way through the peer review.

Greg: Yeah. So we try to involve production and by production in this particular case we’re talking about with our project managers and our lead carpenters, we try to incorporate them into the process early on. Generally speaking, it’s around once I’ll start creating an estimate around that class C level, that plus or -15% variability in the estimate. That’s where we loop them in because at this point we’re booking a site trades meeting.

Greg: We’re bringing all of our sub trades, our project manager, our lead character on the site to really do a deep dive, meet the customer of course, as well. but also look at the project, get your boots on the ground and figure out what are the constraints of the project, both logistically and construction wise, that sort of thing.

Greg: So when it comes to the lead carpenter side of things, I’ll sit down with the lead carpenter about an hour or so before the site trades meeting, and we do a deep dive on the plans. It’s just so that we can get some familiarity of what it is that we’re looking at. So once we get into that site trade, meaning they’re not just learning about the project for the first time, they are in there with a purpose.

Greg: They’re looking for that little 15% area that we can improve on those construct ability issues that aren’t quite clear evident on the plans. And I think with the PMS two, it’s very similar. And Martin can talk to this a little bit more, but it’s for them to get on there and figure out what are the logistical issues here, what are some of the issues that or customer concerns that we have to deal with?

Margaret: What’s the realistic timeline for them?

Greg: And so that all ties into part of our system that we can talk about a little bit later. But, we go over our hours. It’s very transparent. We go over our hours and our timelines and our estimate with the lead carpenter and production and or. Sorry, project managers. Right. So that they have an idea of, of what we’re thinking, this project’s going to take.

Margaret: When you begin this process as well, by gathering just a ton of, archive material, all our historical data, and you build this database to start. And then we had some meet to actually work with. And then that’s being refined over time too. So it was a really good launchpad to be able to trust because he’s not bringing in his own thoughts is like, here’s what we’ve done historically.

Margaret: So that too encouraged by and I think for sure.

Greg: Yeah, the whole the whole goal is to encourage that by and it’s a it becomes an us and a team thing. It’s not just people in an office who are setting arbitrary hours. It’s, hey, let’s work together. Let’s come up with ours that we agree on, and let’s make this a team effort to deliver the best possible product to our customer.

Margaret: Yeah.

Greg: We talk about this a lot with our production manager, roundtable groups and things like that. And often the pushback we see is around assigning the project manager. When is it too early? When is it too late? Are you investing too much upfront? And then that project may or may not run that job? What have you guys done to sort of maybe fix that or sort of temper that attitude and how’s it working out?

Margaret: It’s funny you ask, because I had someone request this morning an assignment going to be a long variance process. Probably not going until 2025. So I said, are you using this resource now or, you know, later because we have to avoid that kind of situation. So every job dependent, the project leaders reach out when they think they’re ready.

Margaret: ideally we have we have a rudimentary tracking sheet we’re using at this time that we’re looking to improve a bit more as well, where we can actually assign in the future and sort of see where people are getting heavy. The key there that will come in future is really trying to hit those pre-construction dates so that we can.

Margaret: That’s a whole project in itself almost, you know, but they, they get assigned pretty early sometimes, you know, customer base, location, always checking capacities. We have teams that are really working well together as well. that’s not our model to be individual teams, but at the same time, if you can capitalize on really strong relationships, no one seems to be disappointed in that.

Margaret: But we we definitely work from a space that we should be able to work with everyone doing the same things because we know the process or how we interact with each other and things like that. Yeah. Okay, so, so far it’s going well. I it’s going to get better. but we have a view to it for sure.

Margaret: And do our best to try and hit the hit the targets.

Tim: So Josh, you, you got out there, you did your trade day, your trade walked, and then what happens after that?

Greg: At this point, I’m going to go back and I’m going to refine the estimates. We have quite a flurry of quotes coming in. So we’re putting in our quotes from the subcontractors as well. We’re really refining that estimate. On my end I’m working with our internal labor. So I’m going to based on recommendations from the lead carpenter in the PM, I’m updating those, scopes.

Greg: And I’m usually in communication with them. Either it’s text or maybe we’ll do a if if there’s a lot of scope change, maybe they come in and we sit down and we go over it. But it’s it’s really a constant line of communication between the team at this point because it’s it’s all full steam ahead to get to that peer review.

Tim: Okay. So you mentioned, you know, within 10 or 15% any horror stories where you did the trade walk and your project manager and your lead carpenter said this, this, this, this, this, and when you started punching the numbers in, it’s coming up like 25% more than what you thought it was going to be. And what do you do about that?

Tim: Because that’s the fear. That’s the the big fear that business owners and salespeople have. You don’t want to lose it because you strung it out too long, but you don’t want to lose it because somebody said, we can’t do it for that. So I’m just kind of curious, like, how do you handle that?

Greg: Yeah, it’s a little bit multifaceted. I think the first thing is I like to under-promise and overdeliver. So when we’re in that high variability estimate, I like to keep the numbers, pad it up. So we have that that safety net. Yep. but on top of that these numbers are informed by years and years of historical data.

Greg: So we have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to come out to. There are of course, going to be times where we discover something that is totally, wildly inaccurate. And it happens. Mistakes happen. It’s not a perfect process, but we’re really trying to hit that 80 or 90% of the mark for 80 or 90% of the jobs.

Greg: We have a process that works.

Margaret: Yeah, the unknowns become maybe like sometimes a lack of a deep enough investigation or interruption to the space to to make sure we know something, something. but yeah, I think you’re kind of as we go through those, those the budget development, I think Josh. Yeah, the goal is to stay as close to what you think it’s going to be in the end.

Margaret: And I think the track record is pretty good so far. Yeah.

Tim: So how do you justify the man hours for this? I’m kind of assuming project managers are on salary, but Lee carpenters will be hourly. Right. Is that correct?

Margaret: And, we were on the project managers are hourly as well.

Tim: Okay. So how do you justify I’m just sitting here going, yeah, we’re got, I don’t know, 20 hours of project management time and ten hours a lead carpenter time. By the time you go through all this, how do you justify that or how do you account for it? Let’s put it that way.

Margaret: Yeah. well, our our salespeople are, you know, they’re the ones kind of driving the boat. The expectation with the customers for that, it takes a lot of work to put together a good product. So value to the customers where we are driven from. there’s certainly been times where we have had to pull ours out just because we don’t feel that value was rendered.

Margaret: so we were watching that. It’s a very subjective, event. But at the same time, we don’t get a lot of pushback. The salespeople do a great job of those budget check ins with our customers, so we don’t get to I know the expectations we invoice on the regular, always trying to keep a view to where we’re going next.

Margaret: So setting the expectations there is probably the most important that.

Tim: Yeah, I just want to I just want to highlight what I think you said here, when sales does budget check ins, because I’ve heard over and over and over again that we started with an estimated value 200,000, let’s say. And through all this process, it escalated to 350. And then that’s the first time the client hears about it.

Tim: So tell me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like sales is helping that client understand why this thing is creeping a little bit and moving up, instead of it being like, you know, I’m here to dump the last number on you and see how you react.

Greg: That. Yeah, that that’s absolutely it. I work close with the with the sales member on the job. So when we first come in for a high level budget just to qualify the customer, make sure that what it is that they want, we can actually do for them in the budget range that they want. We make sure that if the budget’s going up crazy, we’re trying not to over design, we’re trying to give them something that they can that’s in their budget.

Greg: Yeah. So we there’s always a lot of touch points with the salesperson and the customer.

Margaret: And they have an accountable to that experience for the customer. So by not focusing on an estimate and focusing on their customer experience and having those conversations, as I think what helps move that along and get the acceptance for sure.

Tim: Absolutely. Yeah. There’s the customer experience. So I’m just going to share something with with you guys and with the listeners that I’ve worked with a company in Seattle on a job review one time, and what they saw on this job review was during that trade walk, they found out the staff goes like, I think the boiler is going to have to be replaced, which of course was a large ticket item.

Tim: So instead of just saying the boiler has to be replaced, we’re going to add it in. They literally told the client that there may be a change order coming up for the boiler. We won’t know. And they pre sold the change order. And so when they got to actually investigating it you know everything was clear. It needed to be replaced.

Tim: And so the client was already ready for that change order. And I thought that was one of the best things that sales and production can do working together. It doesn’t go into that original budget, you know, but everybody is aware that there could be an additional 40 grand or 50 grand to get that boiler replaced. And so I thought that was one of the really classic good coordination between sales and production.

Margaret: Yeah, I would say I think we put that in our contract when we can identify those things. Do. Yeah. We have a little summary at the bottom propose, you know, possible possible changes coming.

Tim: Yeah. So that’s great.

Margaret: Transparency and communication. Probably.

Tim: So Josh mentioned earlier that, you know we don’t want this process to take too much time. And so Margaret, why don’t you I mean, I, I know there’s no such thing as a normal job, but give us some kind of idea about how long, you know, just like the not the whole sales process, but from when we when we get that production team involved to actually signing what tends to be the time frame there.

Margaret: you I mean, the goal is couple weeks. that sometimes depends on any contract promises to customers. And if that hasn’t been informed, that process can get really rash. We’ve seen that happen. It’s not effective. There’s no value, not no value, but a lot less value for sure. Right. so ideally, in a perfect world, you’re going to look at a contract, you’re going to come back about a week or two and you’re going to tell your team, okay, contracting two weeks, you know, contracts ready for review by Friday.

Margaret: And I booked a meeting for Monday. Okay. if that runs the perfect scenario, then people lock it in, they do their preparation, comment on notes, ask the questions, mark those things up digitally as much as you can so that when we’re coming together, we’re sorting through those, knocking them off and ideally coming out with very few. Today’s.

Margaret: So the timeline is like is it’s a lot of effort in a short period of time. If we can if we can nail that, that that’s the best value of that peer review I think. And it gives the salespeople are really keen to have that site meeting the contract timeline as short as it can be. So as Josh said, that’s go time.

Margaret: So the more we can keep momentum on that, the better we get through that, that important milestone.

Tim: So twice, Margaret, you have said they they come prepared and I want to know what that means because many, many companies the meeting is scheduled. The project manager shows up in the office and it’s the first time they’ve really seen the final documentation. They might have done a trade walk. They might have seen an original plan, but they hadn’t seen the dot.

Tim: So tell me what it means that they come prepared to that peer review.

Margaret: Yeah. So preparedness I think everyone has a different window designer wants to make sure that there’s no outstanding selections, that the drawings are up to date, ready to go into the contract language and reference numbers. the estimator is cross-referencing quotes. scopes are clearly written in the contract. the project manager used to have a lot more, responsibility around numbers and estimating and pose and matching up.

Margaret: Josh has taken a lot of that. So our focus is really on the execution or the language of the of the contract, looking for a through the lens of what could go wrong, you know, as we do. You know. Yeah. and so preparedness for me is everyone’s done their own look at the estimate. Any notes? drawings.

Margaret: for myself, it’s, like I said, all teams will read through the contract. make any notes, flag anything coming up for them. So it really is head down time, a bathroom, you know, that can take a good that can take an hour just because you want to make sure you’re knocking it out something a little bigger.

Margaret: You’ve probably been involved in a little bit more. So it’s not challenging. I have had a few instances where I’ve not been to the site meeting. I’ve never met the customer. I have nothing but what you brought to the table. it’s still doable. It’s just a lot more uncomfortable. Right? And again, still has value. So when we get into these smaller jobs, act like you were speaking to earlier.

Margaret: We don’t want to get too stuck with over process. And that’s where you learn to step out of process. But the more you share and people have upfront, then then that our peer review should be just tickety boo, tickety boo boo. That’s the perfect scenario.

Tim: I so, Josh, I’m just kind of curious, your impression. Let’s just say we’re we’re talking about a company that doesn’t do any of this, and they’re on. They’re about ten people in the field and maybe eight people in the office. Not quite as big as you folks are, but what might be the time that you think it would take set for somebody to say, wow, this is a great idea.

Tim: We’re not doing any of it to when somebody could really start feeling like they’ve got it down. Is this like a three month process? Two month process? What do you think?

Greg: Okay, I think I think the first thing is that it can start immediately with just open and honest and transparent communication, okay. Just having that communication channel between the people who are building the estimate and the people who are working on the field, or the project managers who are going to be overseeing it, that’s the first start. It doesn’t need to be in writing.

Greg: It doesn’t need to be a full blown process yet. It’s just making sure that the communication is there and kind of just like how we did it. It can start off as a flow chart. It just a really high level concept, and it can grow into swim lanes that show how our process flows, and eventually it becomes into tangible checklists to make sure, hey, are you hitting all of these points?

Greg: so that’s really it can start immediately. It depends on how detailed and involved you want to be. But the first start is open and honest and transparent communication with your team.

Margaret: Yeah, I feel.

Tim: Like, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. Josh wins the gold star. He said magic word.

Margaret: Check the draft. Exactly where we’ve come full circle after these. You know, we started with spreadsheet. The project life cycle grew to flowcharts and then the complexity of those needed to be dialed back to. But I think we had to understand everything and how every, like even understanding how everything moves through a finance team, which you don’t see a lot of how you’re how your work affects.

Margaret: So so that’s our that’s our next steps. And everyone oh companies are are doing what they’re doing. They are already doing something. They already have a value chain. And, and sometimes the helpful part is to just have it mapped out as basically as you say, just to say, oh, yeah, we really do do something very repeatable, you know.

Margaret: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. I’ve, seen over and over again, like somebody will probably write to me and say, hey, are you think they’re willing to share their checklist with me? And my immediate reaction is, well, we can ask them. But I think working at working the process is the most important part of this. Getting your process going and your checklists that are from that process, and just getting a set of checklists from somebody typically doesn’t solve some of the challenges that individual companies have.

Tim: So that’s that’s amazing. what you guys have done.

Margaret: There’s a lot of books out there with checklists, and we’ve done that and we’re like, okay, let’s put the checklist together. And they just they’re not as useful because they’re not yours. Yeah, they’re not your your thing I guess. Yeah.

Tim: Wholeheartedly agree. So Margaret, can you, quantify any results as that. You can see I mean, typically we like to say we used to be, 1% net profit, and now we’re 8% because we do this or something, but anything like, like that, that you could share with the listeners that says this has been successful, all this work has really paid off.

Margaret: I guess my data point at this point is monitoring slippage. we’ve reduced slippage 3% in the last three months. In the last quarter went up just a little bit recently. and, sorry, I lost my train of thought there 3%. So. Right. And then so one of Josh’s early jobs of estimating it was this tiny little straight to pricing.

Margaret: And I, I was the project manager and one of the great communication pieces was just how tight it was when a person and has to execute. So sharing that with the team, having this beautiful little, it was a really nice story to a nice couple that live there 12 years. Just quick little cosmetic things and it executed beautifully.

Margaret: And it was like like right on budget. Right? Like everything was really tight. So that feels really good when and that when I had that, that was my first job with Josh. And then I was like, I don’t need to look at numbers anymore. I don’t even care.

Greg: I think for me know, Tim, beyond the quantitative results, there’s qualitative ones too, right? There’s more team buying in the projects. Think maybe you can’t quantify that, but knowing that your team, they trust what hours they’ve been given and given and they’re working towards hitting those goals. There’s a morale boost there. There’s a whole team coming together aspect of that where we just operate better and we end up giving a better final product.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, I think the quantitative it around employees is retention. I think this is one of the things that drives people batty, is that they don’t have any control of the stuff that’s given to them, and so they do their best. They work hard, but they still get challenged, reviewed, scolded for slippage and and things where they have no.

Tim: And that creates, I don’t really want to go through my life like this. And so they don’t. But I’m looking. So I think retention is one of the quantitative things that you can look at. And just the fact that you’ve grown to the size that you are definitely means something, right? Something’s going on. Right?

Margaret: I like that you said that because we just had four, ten year anniversaries here in the last. No kidding. Yeah, we’re surrounded by that. So that’s really it. It does feel good. And it gives other people oh there is room to grow here. And if it if it’s the environment that you like to work in. you’re right.

Margaret: Retention is out of this world. Great.

Tim: I think that’s fantastic. So we’re going to wrap up here. This has been absolutely, incredibly, terrifically good or I don’t know how many other words I can use, but, I’m just kind of curious, you know, that. I know I’m at construction a little bit. I know there’s always a push to get better and better. What’s on the horizon is there something that you’re like, where is this going?

Tim: And that if you can share something with the listeners about that?

Margaret: for me, I’d say we’re refining this. You know, our 80% or more is renovations, home renovations. we’re also working in, tenant improvement. So we’re looking at developing what we’ve worked so hard on, on the renovation side and migrating that out to clean up our other sort of smaller departments and our commercial work. that’s that’s the near future.

Margaret: Do you have anything?

Greg: Yeah, yeah, I think even on a smaller scale, just trying to get a little bit better every single day, improve those processes, improve those checklists, and make sure that we’re also reducing some of the redundant steps to to be efficient. Yeah. So yeah I think we’ve yeah.

Tim: Yeah this is fantastic. Well thank you very much. You know again for taking some time out for us. And I know the listeners are going to appreciate this, and I just wish you guys all the best.

Margaret: Thanks so.

Greg: Much. Thank you for having us. Margaret. And Josh, thank you both for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again about the impact you’re having. Really great work. What have we learned today Tim.

Tim: Oh my goodness. You know, there’s a lot of things that are going on all around the country. I made a just a few notes here.

Greg: And there in Canada.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. And you know, the whole idea of being prepared, everybody being prepared for that final meeting. Yes, I made a note about that because that’s a huge part of it. If people aren’t prepared and it’s not just the production team, but everybody coming to that prepared makes it that much, more effective. I really like the idea that Josh is spending a little time before the trade walk with the lead carpenter and not just project manager, but with the lead carpenter to go over things so that when the lead carpenter goes to that trade day, that trade walk, they have a pretty good idea of what this job is supposed to do.

Tim: And then they can look for the defects or the challenges a little bit more effectively by doing that. And I thought that was, a really amazing, thing that they’re doing, ahead of time. You know, and again, it’s preparing somebody for something that you want them to be able to do.

Greg: Yeah, I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. I love the fact that you brought up the fact that she mentioned preparedness twice. And we talk about this a lot, you know, around production meetings and one on ones is, you know, have your staff come with some, you know, prepared, with something. And I just, I mean, I’m just giddy about processes.

Greg: I just love the fact that it’s working. I love the fact that production is getting an opportunity up front.

Tim: The other thing that I thought was really interesting, and they’re a pretty big company, and I, we didn’t get into like how many people are selling. But when I asked that question, like, how did you get the sales team on board with this? The comment was the boss pretty much said, we’re doing this. And, you know, it’s not not really up for negotiation.

Tim: And, you know, I’m not an authoritarian, you know, in terms of managing companies, but but having the guts and having the the knowledge and the know how to say this is going to be a critical part of our world. And then skipping down to where I asked about the results for from Margaret, the whole 3% slippage. Now just remember 14, 15 million, 3% slippage is a pretty big chunk of money.

Tim: You know, this is not, you know, $10,000. This is a large chunk of money. I wish I could do the math that fast, but I can’t. So but but but I do it. They they looked ahead and they could see the reward for all the hard work. And that’s what drives innovation, is being able to look forward to having a vision and saying, you know what?

Tim: That’s what we want to get to. Here’s the small steps that it’s going to take to actually get there. Well, once.

Greg: Again, we would like to thank Margaret Cormode and Josh Radford of Mac Renovations and Victoria, British Columbia, for joining us today. And thank you for listening to another episode of The Tim Faller Show.

Tim: And remember at The Tim Faller Show. And I think this is a great illustration of it. We’re working hard to eliminate it is what it is from your vocabulary.