"What gets measured gets done."
Have you heard that before?
Speakers on stage at the BuiltWorlds 2021 US Summit in Chicago earlier this month repeated this chorus in some form or another... each with their own twist.
Joy was being measured by one owner.
Admittedly he did not use the word "joy", but he referenced the hard-to-capture but critical metric of workplace "enjoyment".
His employee-owned company captures this metric on a scale of 1-10 by asking if workers would look forward to working with the same crew and/or subs on the next job.
It's a way to ensure that he's doing all that he can to keep good workers.
What gets measured gets done.
Try it.
Manual reporting was being measured by another company.
It sounds strange and redundant to measure manual reporting, but if it doesn't get measured then nothing gets done about it.
Manual reporting costs man hours.
Manual reporting is prone to error.
Manual reporting is not real time.
Manual reporting is not 24/7 without additional costs.
Those who measure the direct and indirect costs of manual reporting quickly discover that it's often times more expensive than it's worth.
Owners who measure it can then put a real dollar value on what it would be worth to automate that age-old practice.
What gets measured automatically often gets done better.
Rework was being measured but not for the reasons you think.
Rework creates workflow disruptions and profit loss. But what happens when you start to expect the same kind of rework on every job?
Predictable rework is no longer 'rework'.
By measuring and centralizing the time and dollar costs of rework on modern data dashboards, today's owners are comparing the kind of rework being done across multiple jobs and identifying patterns that they can address.
Measured patterns become benchmarks against which open-minded owners then test solutions. They start on a small scale first before rolling out across their entire enterprise.
Conclusion
With workers in shorter and shorter supply, owners are on the look out for technology that effortlessly creates more wrench time per worker, with an emphasis on "effortless".
The owners that we met and heard from at the BuiltWorld 2021 US Summit confirmed that technology can play a role so long as we are careful to proceed in a way that respects real, on-the-ground progress in the near term while laying the ground work for improved efficiency in the future.
1. Start small.
2. Automate reporting tasks.
3. Look for patterns.