Wyatt Homes

With slight modifications for the vinyl windows typically used in our homes, this is how we install our windows - the right way.  I have yet to see another builder in our area install windows correctly.

The schedule for building a home is a complex beast involving hundreds of steps, complex dependencies, and many variable factors.  A good builder manages all of this for the client.  However, there are times where the schedule and the client intersect, and sometimes in less than ideal ways.

A big part of any home building project is picking out materials, colors, appliances, etc.  If it’s a spec home, the builder does most of this (if a buyer comes along before the project is complete I’ll often allow the buyer to make whatever selections are left to be made).  On a custom home, the homeowner makes these selections.

This can often become a scheduling problem, because for some reason it’s hard to impress on the homeowner how necessary their prompt selections are  to running their job smoothly.  I think this partially arises when they see that some things don’t matter as much as others when it comes to making their selections.  i.e. In some cases, while they are told it’s important to make a selection by such-and-such date, that date comes and goes and there’s no consequences as far as they can see.

This arises because of the fact that there is a Critical Path in the scheduling of a home.  Some selections don’t lie on this path.

Critical Paths and you

All steps in the builidng of a home have to be completed to finish the home.  However, all steps are not critical to advancing the schedule to the next level.

For example, picking out the wall paint colors are critical because the walls have to be painted before trim, cabinets, flooring, etc can be installed.  Picking out the color of your shutters is not as critical because the installation of the shutters doesn’t hold up anything except the completion of the home.  As Wikipedia says in the above link, “Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly impacts the planned project completion date”.

Other scheduling snafu’s

On a recent project the homeowner’s became concerned because the framing wasn’t going as fast as they thought it should.  They didn’t see how we could meet our planned completion date.

The framing was, in fact, going slower than it could have.  This wasn’t a concern to me because of the fact that the subcontractors who were dependent upon completion of the framing were scheduled to come at certain dates (based upon their own schedules) giving us much longer to complete the framing than we normally have.

The framing got finished, and all of a sudden there were a dozen new people on the job doing HVAC, plumbing, electrical, insulation.  The homeowner’s were happy to see the progress!

At this point the project was right on schedule and I was happy with the progress.  The next subcontractor to come in was the drywall taping and painting contractor.  This sub lay right on the critical path.  I try to avoid this situation as much as possible because it leaves the schedule of your project right on an outside party which can lead to problems, and on this project it did.  The contractor stretched the job out so far it took him 6 weeks to do a 2 week job!  Needless to say, neither I, nor the homeowners, were happy with this situation.

To add to the problems, the homeowners didn’t quite understand what I’m explaining with this post.  Because the taper/painter was taking so long, I didn’t hurry on some other smaller jobs that needed done.  These jobs didnt lay on the critical path, and didn’t ever have an affect on the finish date.

This house took 5 weeks longer than it was supposed to.  The delay was directly attributable to the taper/painter.  I now try even hard to keep subs off of the critical path.

Hopefully, this discussion will hep you understand a little more the things that go into scheduling the completion of your next home!

Zillow is an online real estate estimator that uses various data sources to determine the value of a home. Today they added the ability to list your home directly on the site. This is an area of the real estate business that is going to show tremendous growth in the future as online sales start to push out traditional methods of buying and selling real estate. I see a big change in this space with regards to Realtors. It’s entirely possible with the ease of online listing that more and more people will save the traditional commissions and save money by going the online route.

Unfortunately, as with many technologies, these changes will take longer to propagate to more rural counties likes ours. Zillow has almost no entries for a local town.

One of the issues that owners of a construction business (actually, any business) faces is summed up in the question, “Why would someone hire me to build their home?”, (Or “Why would someone buy one of my homes?”, if you build spec homes like we do here.)

“Why would someone hire me to build their home?”

Our hardest customer to acquire is the uneducated customer. In Missouri, home builders aren’t licensed, and most towns who do license builders require nothing but payment of a fee. No guarantees of knowledge, workmanship, or honesty come with the license. This means that any Joe Blow who has watched a few episodes of This Old House can become a “builder”. The problem with this two-fold.

1. These guys can produce poor quality work, further harming the reputation of contractor’s in general.
2. Customers who shop on price alone are often fooled by these builders. The burden of education is placed on those of us who take pride in our trade.

There is a lot involved with building a house properly. This extra work means extra cost. Now, don’t get me wrong, in many cases, the efficiency that we can bring to the table more than offsets these costs but they’re still costs to consider.