Masonry Magazine March 2006 Page. 18
Contractor
Contractor to Contractor faster and faster so they can develop a revenue stream earlier. Whatever owners we're working for, we always find they have a completion date in sight. More times than not, it's a little over the top.
The design-build approach really enables us to meet their needs. It enables us to overlap design and construction activities so that we can get the project coming out of the ground while the owners are making final programming and design decisions relative to what the interiors of the building are going to look like. It's a faster delivery method.
We enjoy it because we have great relationships with specialty contractors and local designers, and we're a very collaborative company. We love sitting around the table with the owner, designer and key specialty contractors and figuring out how we can get that owner what he or she needs.
Masonry: You have a very strong policy concerning safety. Tell us a little more about what steps you take to keep safety at the forefront with such a large organization.
Whistler: Regardless of how large the company is, you either have a culture of maintaining a safe workplace or not, and that culture starts at the top. In every communication our CEO makes to our employees, he says that each and every one of them has the responsibility before they assign one of their associates a work task to ask themselves whether they would ask their husband, wife, grandchild or child to do that task. If it's well planned and safe enough that they would ask someone in their family to do it, then it's safe enough for our employees. We treat our employees like our family. If you do that, you're going to think ahead and you're going to figure out a safe way to do it to ensure that they go home that night.
If you do all of those things, safety becomes an easy thing to do, and that's really a departure from what we've seen a lot of other companies doing. We embrace all the training and state-of-the-art safety practices. We have a good relationship with the local OSHA office, and our corporate safety director is president of the local area safety council. We do all those normal, corporate, due diligence items, but at the top of the company, we send a strong message to our people that it's just the way it is around here.
Masonry: Your company has been involved in an array of building projects from educational and health care facilities, to religious buildings and parking structures. Looking back, what would you say was your most difficult project and how did you overcome the obstacles?
Whistler: For me personally, we did a $10 million industrial project in 23 calendar days. When we were asked to bid on the project, it was one of those things where we had to reach real deep and decide, first of all, can we really do this? We engaged our employees, sat down and put a plan together. We hand-picked specialty contractors. We didn't invite the world to bid on each component-we picked the best of the best. We said, together, this team is either going to win or lose this job, and if we can't win this job with this team, then we don't really need this job.
Well, we won it and had about six weeks to plan the work in a very detailed manner, on an hour-by-hour basis, to ensure we were successful. It was a 24/7 job, and we met formally as a group at least twice a day in progress and coordination meetings... It was a job that just never slept.
We brought it in on time and satisfied a major industrial client that we've worked with for over 50 years.
Masonry: What is the best advice you would give a budding mason contractor?
Whistler: I'd say to pick good, key people and work together with those people to develop a sound business plan. Build your company like you build buildings - with a strong foundation and slowly and steadily.
I see so many new people coming into the business, and they want it all now. They're like teenagers-they've got to have it right now, and it just doesn't work like that. You have to start slow, be successful and build on that success. It takes patience and the ability to surround yourself with good, key people.
Masonry: What do you feel is the biggest misconception about the masonry industry?
Whistler: That it is not very technologically advanced. That's a misconception of many laypeople about construction in general. If you ask a layperson to describe a construction worker, they're going to draw you this picture of a less-than-sophisticated brute of a man, and our industry is anything but that.
We know that masonry, in particular, is very labor intensive, so as businesspeople, we try to make that labor as efficient as possible. All the innovations in scaffolding, if nothing else, in the last five to ten years really show you the type of creativity that all of us in our businesses have. We are always trying to figure out a better way to do something, and a lot of times it involves technology. This is just starting. There will be more and more technology influence in how we do our work.
Masonry: What would you do to change that misconception?
Whistler: An association like MCAA is probably the right entity to do regular press releases for mainstream publications that provide examples of innovative solutions to unique challenges. That's a way to change the perception over the long term.
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