have been set. Major production builders are particularly at risk because they produce so many houses every day—if the installed performance of a product deviates from the desired specification, it will show up in the form of frustrated customers inundating customer service phone or email systems. Because of the scale of production, systemic issues with quality and performance may landslide when they occur.
Cheap isn't cheap in the long run
The cheapest product is not the cheapest product. Period.
Lean profit margins and quick turnarounds tempt cutting corners in the most obvious places—often, this means purchasing less expensive products. However, initial cost versus delivered cost must play into the equation or the cost is far more than expected. Lack of trade familiarity with a new product or lower product quality can lead to improper installation or increased labor cost and can result in increased callbacks and warranty issues. Ensuring a deliberate training effort for your trades, as well as providing site supervisors with appropriate tools to check for quality during installation, is imperative in ensuring installed quality.
Also, consider the cost of low quality products to the builder’s brand—after all, cost is not only measurable in dollars. Tom Brick, Director of Construction and Quality Initiative Programs for U.S. Home Corporation (a member of the Lennar Family of Builders) relays, “70% of premature product failure is the result of poor installation, not poor product. If the product fails, the product brand, and the builder’s brand, suffers.”
If you’re going to change a product specification, do it deliberately and slowly. Do your research on implementation issues, as lack of trade familiarity with new product technologies can cost you money and cause you headaches. Have a trial run (or six) to apply the new product to a limited number of homes where the risk is manageable and correction of any issues is manageable. Make sure your trades are trained appropriately and that your site supervisors have the tools they need to do an adequate quality assurance check.
Pat Kurek with Hedgewood Homes in Atlanta, GA shares the following wake-up call. “We were looking at a new pressure treated exterior wood shingle, with a 50 year warranty. The one we were using had no warranty, so there was a clear benefit to the new product we could pass on to the homeowner. The manufacturer told us that the product was the same price, and we had heard that it could be installed the same way.” After doing a trial run on one home, Kurek found that the product looked terrible. The lap, exposure, and size of the new product were very different from the existing product. If he had approved it for use in his production before this trial, there would have been a much greater problem than simply dealing with the aesthetics of the one test home.
Examples of poorly researched and implemented product or system changes can be more extreme than repercussions to the aesthetics of the house. For example, take basement insulation, which is now required in many regions under the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code). Builders who select blanket insulation with non-permeable facing (like vinyl or foil) risk creating a veritable petri dish for mold growth when the insulation is applied against a new concrete basement wall, which can contain hundreds of pounds of water that take up to a year to dissipate.
The chicken or the egg?
According to many builders, product selection comes second to vendor selection in the process of ensuring product quality and performance.
“I would rather have an ordinary product from a vendor who was willing to be flexible and work with me, than an extraordinary product from a vendor with a bad attitude,” says George Casey of Arvida Homes, in Florida.
Find a supplier who recognizes the importance of individual customers and who is both willing and, as an organization, able to be responsive and to create strategies that work within the nuances of your business.
Ensure that the quality is there
Basic product testing and good brand reputation doesn’t mean the product will live up to your customer’s expectations.
Talk to your trades. Understand their limitations and weigh their experience (good, bad, or none at all) with the products you’re specifying in the product selection equation.
Talk to your suppliers. What do they do to assure quality of the delivered product in the factory, during distribution and delivery? How often is the product tested for performance? If the performance of the product relies heavily on installer skill (such as blown-in insulation), what does the supplier do to ensure that the installers have adequate information and training to achieve the specified performance?
Talk to other buyers (the suppliers’ customers) and be nosy. Looking at other builders who were using [the wood shingle product], Kurek noted that although the manufacturer clearly states a 50-year warranty, there were clearly apparent durability problems. They’re still not using the new product, and according to Kurek, they won’t until he’s been assured through additional research and simply keeping his eyes open, that it will hold up to the manufacturer’s promises.
The actual selection of products is only a small component in ensuring installed performance, and ultimately, overall building performance and quality. Deliberately taking control of the quality and performance of your homes through the development and implementation of performance standards, selection of trades and suppliers for flexibility and performance, appropriate training of trades and quality assurance, and product selection is an integral part of reducing liability, increasing customer satisfaction, and finally, simply building quality homes.
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