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We do not include technical charts or illustrations, as they are reserved for our seminars, books, online courses and advising. We welcome your comments and questions via email.
In partnership with Stevens Construction Institute, the University of Florida’s Center for Advanced Construction Information Modeling (CACIM) has developed a research questionnaire to assess the maturity and quality of BIM implementation within the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operations (AECO) industry. Below is a link to a brief survey of 21 questions hosted on Zoomerang which is divided into three parts:
Part I: Demographics
Part II: Organizational BIM Maturity
Part III: Project-Wide BIM Maturity
All responses will remain confidential and the results will be used for research purposes only. To express our gratitude for your generous participation, you will receive a short summary of the study and its findings via email on March 15, 2012. Thank you for your time and participation. We appreciate your support and look forward to sharing the anonymous results with you!
Survey Link: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22E6WJQ72UV
Please click on this link for details
Matt Stevens will be speaking Before the Rice Global Engineering and Construction Group At Rice University on December 9, 2011
Composition of the Round Table may be found at http://www.contractorsblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Rice-Global-EC-Forume-Membership.ppt
The membership represents a very large cross section of major E&C companies and their suppliers. Full information about the organization is available at:
http://www.forum.rice.edu/
Information about previous roundtables (including presentations) is available at:
http://www.forum.rice.edu/past-events/past-roudtables/
My research is not based on Lean. It was an attractive area but, I decided that the business of specialty contracting is where a real need exists. The literature review bears this out. My two books indicate my passion for this. My thesis is not a surprise to people who know me.
Toyota’s 4 Ps of Lean hierarchical lists processes as the second need after philosophy and before partnership and problem solving. We believe that this is an important area of research whether the focus is Quality, Lean or Six Sigma.
The database of 155 practices and the correlation to financial result – RoNW – we are building is for others to perform follow-on research in the coming years. We hope it will be something akin to Dr. Halpin’s CYCLONE data and software.
We will be using highly sophisticated software packages that are common to the Rinker School at the University of Florida for our statistical tests. My firm is sponsoring the cost of the work.
When the results are released to the industry in a few years, we hope that processes that are common to high performing firms against U.S peer RoNW averages (and not common to low performing firms) would be used by Lean practitioner’s to further help the construction industry. As you know, statistically correlated processes from practicing contractors can only add to the knowledge of specialty construction.
As a contrast, the definitions of words vary from person to person and can cause confusion. Fact based research helps clarify.
Hope all continues to go very well.
Matt Stevens
A recent study commissioned by the National Society of Professional Engineers concludes that about half of construction projects today are behind schedule. I was interviewed about this research and agreed with its finding. As a result of this study, there is some finger pointing. However, it seems everyone holds a piece of the fault.
Little is gained from recriminations since everyone wants the same thing: an on-time, on-budget, excellent-quality project constructed safely. Additionally, each stakeholder in construction wants to do a great job personally, and thus be rewarded with more work at a higher margin in the future. So there is a great chance we can get a better result – the majority of projects on schedule – with a little focus.
Volume does not equal profits in our business. Simply put, keeping overall costs lower than revenue does. This is a function of selecting the right work and being efficient as an organization in executing that work. All construction contractors have less of a volume problem than a “right size” problem. Getting an organization to the right size in which it can handle field and office work efficiently is many times a strategic question to be answered by senior management.
Company wide resource forecasting done well and you may find out that you didn’t need as many resources as you once thought. This is good news for anyone looking to make a shorter trip between gross profit and net profit before tax.
Read more in our recent books published by McGraw Hill, The Practical Construction MBA (2011, 458 pages) and Managing a Construction Firm on Just 24 Hours a Day for more information – go to: http://stevensci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCII&Category_Code=PCMBABook
Children of contractors can be a joy and a disappointment. All family situations become complicated with the addition of history. I have no advice other than observations. Some children shouldn’t work for their parent. The accountability is uneven when compared to other employees (too harsh or not at all). Also, the perception of others is unfair. The child works for the company due to the owner. Each of these is destructive to the child or parent (or both). Be fair to the child and let the employment relationship be their idea. Some families have some very clear processes for employment of the contractor’s family member such as a definitive number of years that they have to work for another company or time required in the field building work.
Read more in our recent books published by McGraw Hill, The Practical Construction MBA (2011, 458 pages) and Managing a Construction Firm on Just 24 Hours a Day for more information – go to: http://stevensci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCII&Category_Code=PCMBABook
All new management hires will cause some miscommunication, missteps and expensive rework. Have someone take more time than unusual inspecting his / her work. This will minimize mistakes. The above is one more reason to hire slowly and carefully. New employees are expensive.
This is one more reason for incremental growth of construction firms.
Read more in our recent books published by McGraw Hill, The Practical Construction MBA (2011, 458 pages) and Managing a Construction Firm on Just 24 Hours a Day for more information – go to: http://stevensci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCII&Category_Code=PCMBABook
Regardless of the economy, construction contracting organizations must forecast the utilization of rare resources such as qualified labor, equipment, cash and management talent. There is little room in our profits to have overutilization (overtime, “redline management,” etc.) or underutilization (unproductive assets, higher overall cost per unit installed, etc.). Both are expensive in mistakes or unapplied cost. This activity is important not only when the economy is heated, it is crucial when times are slow. Keeping our critical resources level with client and project demand makes for a more efficient organization and competitive cost structure.
Read more in our recent books published by McGraw Hill, The Practical Construction MBA (2011, 458 pages) and Managing a Construction Firm on Just 24 Hours a Day for more information – go to: http://stevensci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCII&Category_Code=PCMBABook
Books cannot be prescriptive. The author cannot tell you what to do because he doesn’t know you and is not writing just to you. So with any great innovation, more work is needed to refine it. Many hours have to be invested by a serious leader if innovation is to be applied to a specific situation. If not, false starts will follow. Example: the disastrous lean manufacturing methodology application at General Motors. Even with many hours of tailoring, successful implementation is never certain.
My brother is a graduate of M. I. T.’s Sloan School. Mike earned his M.B.A. there some time ago and has a couple of decades of management experience to go with his stellar education. He is not bright but, brilliant in management and leadership matters. I have had more than a few enlightened conversations with Mike. Let me restate that, these weren’t really conversations. I asked and he answered. My questions are about the latest leadership and management challenges facing premier companies. There is much to learn in our industry that is common knowledge in others.
Clearly, construction contracting business research is the missing piece and thus, a potential leverage point for our industry. Since we are the largest private employer in the United States, it is unfathomable that we don’t have more fact based analysis about construction business practices. Rules of thumb and informal business practices are still common. Our firm is dedicated to change this and do more in this area. As we keep construction firms in business, it helps our country in many ways. Remember what former California Governor Pete Wilson stated, “A job is the greatest social program ever invented”. As a further thought, we feel unemployment is a great social ill.
This is an excerpt from our recent book, The Practical Construction MBA (2011, 458 pages) for more information – go to: http://stevensci.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=SCII&Category_Code=PCMBABook
The Construction Contractor’s Digest
