Focusing on Residential Concrete - A Residential Stronghold

A major organizational initiative Bartley Corp. implemented about 10 years ago has helped the company decrease jobsite costs, increase resale and create customer loyalty; it has also helped keep the company profitable in today's economy. After determining some of the key factors slowing down construction and increasing frustrations on the jobsite, Bartley Corp. came up with a plan to assign a project manager (PM) to each jobsite, both commercial and residential.

The PM acts as a liaison between the crew and the customer. Instead of a builder dealing separately with the footings crew, walls crew, waterproofing crew, excavation crew and so on, there is one point person - the PM - who manages all the information on the project, from the plans to the types of products used to the crew scheduling. If there are any construction changes, the customer and the PM have to agree and the crew needs to follow those instructions.

"Project managers provide customer service in the field and helped us to double our sales over the last 10 years," says Jim Bartley, vice president of residential at Bartley Corp. "One of the biggest problems in concrete construction is builders changing their minds and telling our field guys to do something differently than laid out in the plans. Not only does that waste time, but if the builder is wrong he'll blame our crews for the mistakes. We've almost eliminated that vicious cycle." -RW