contract management and risk management. Set goals for your crew tailored to each project When thinking about job site efficiency and crew productivity I remember this quote by Zig Ziglar, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” This is exactly what happens when we send our crews to a job without daily and weekly production goals specifi- cally tailored to each project. If they don’t understand how much production is required for each room type and tile type, they will most likely miss the mark. Helping them understand how their wages relate to the estimated budget and providing them with regular feed- back as the job progresses helps them connect their performance with overall profitability. Projects today are using many different types of tile and different instal- lation methods that require more detailed and accurate information supplied to field installation crews. Not properly planning and execut- ing this part of each project could eat away large amounts of profit in a short period of time. The more budget information shared with field crews the more they will work to meet the realistic goals set for each project. Recoverable Lost Time According to a study released by FMI, field employees spend 42% of their 8-hour day install- ing work as planned, 26% of their day is spent planning, mate- rial handling, lay-out, set-up and mobilizing, while 32% of their day is considered Recoverable Lost Time. This time is lost due to waiting for information, materi- als, equipment, tools, additional manpower or other trades and reworking items already installed. While I’m sure your projects never experience this level of inefficiency, there are at least 5-10 minutes per hour of lost time that could be added to the productive part of the day. This small improvement can have a big impact on your bottom line profit at the end of the year; just run the numbers. Best in Class contractors work hard to empower their employ- ees to know their daily goals so when something outside their con- trol impacts their productivity, they can alert management to get the situation corrected. Every other subcontractor and most general contractors don’t care if we have a productive path to do our work. Protecting our ability to be produc- tive in the field is a major key to overall profitability. Keep on tiling and pursuing best practices! Martin Howard, NTCA president Committee member, ANSI A108 mhoward@davidallen.com PRESIDENT'S LETTER ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 18 TileLetter | August 2018