Communication......

It is the cornerstone of good construction management. Communication with suppliers, lenders, tradesmen and, especially, our clients.

It is our responsibility to insure that those with which we work have a clear understanding of the subject at hand. We insure a timely and concise exchange of information resulting in smoothly executed projects properly completed, on time, within budget and without surprises.

Through the comprehensive administration of our data and our personnel we build both homes of excellence and relationships of excellence.

Data Management

True custom homes are highly data-intensive. Nothing is repeated from project to project. A single home can require as many as 100 "cost centers" or trades & suppliers. It may require the issuance of literally hundreds of payments for labor & materials. The need to coordinate dozens of critical-path relationships in the work schedule furthers the need for advanced data-management.

Coincident with the beginnings of our firm was the birth of personal computers in the early 1980's. We embraced the use of PCs then, knowing that our building business could leverage this new technology to better control the tremendous amount of information associated with each home.

Technology is a tightly integrated, pervasive component of how we work. Our software system was developed in-house and is continually refined. It allows the estimating, cost tracking, scheduling, reporting and management of all aspects of our projects to be cross-linked in a very "usable" way, thus functioning as an extension of our management style.

By example, all requests for payment are made on industry standard Draw Request forms. This format gives our clients, architects and lenders a concise "snapshot" of the cost of the project, amounts paid & owed, and summarizes all changes to date. Scheduling is efficiently & accurately organized via critical-path Gantt charts.

Software is a tool. We have, over the course of nearly 20 years, developed a set of outstanding software tools. But most importantly, we developed the ability to utilize those tools in a productive, meaningful way.

A complete description of our estimating, job costing and other components is beyond the scope of this site. We are happy, however, to provide more details on request.

Personnel Management

Building construction is fundamentally the creation of on object in the real-world, not simply manipulating data. The most sophisticated management technology is of no use without appropriate field coordination.

Our simple, effective supervisory philosophy:

1-Hire only competent, skilled workmen who are masters of their respective trades.

2- Provide the kind of guidance to those trades that enables them to fully understand and produce the caliber of work that we require.

3- Maintain an environment that causes those trades to want to work for us. It is human nature to exceed what is required when one enjoys what one is doing.

We communicate with our trades multiple times throughout the day and we personally visit our jobs each day on average. The most talented craftsmen are not clairvoyant and need continuous contact with the builder to fully understand the scope and details of all design-construction issues.

The focus of our field management is on conveying the "big-picture" vision of the design to the trades while determining the processes, sources and sequences to best attain that vision. This process of "orchestration" serves to further our creative-construction approach.

Most of our craftsmen have worked with us for many years, some have actually been with us from the founding of the firm. These long term relationships foster the best understanding of what we, as builders, want accomplished.

Our craftsmen are one of our strongest assets. Along with an innovative, inspired style of field management, we combine to produce superior results.