Making Time

But for Westmoreland, creating the detailed schedule is just the beginning. To function, the schedule has to be continually revised to reflect progress (or lack of progress) on the job. Then, those updates have to be communicated to everyone involved.

As long ago as the 1980s, Westmoreland says, he was captivated by the potential of scheduling software. “I had a little remodeling company way back in 1989,” he remembers. “I was using Timeline 4 by Symantec on an old DOS-driven computer. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is so cool.' If I could get that schedule information organized and manipulate it, it was amazing how much more productivity I had.”

He says that the more detailed the formal schedule is, the more it helps him. “My little brain can only handle so much,” he jokes. Today, his MS Project schedules encompass 150 to 200 time-interdependent tasks per house. “You have to excavate a hole, then you get the foundation in, then you install the ground rough [underground water supply and drain lines], etc., all the way through to the final clean and changing the construction lock to a permanent lock and turning it over to the homeowner.”

MS Project links the dates of interdependent tasks. Completion of roof sheathing, for instance, can trigger the start date for roofing. “Everything in my schedule is link-driven,” says Westmoreland. “I have a start date for the schedule, and I don't have any other dates that are fixed. I've got every task in my schedule set to start ‘as soon as possible'—with the exception of delivering materials. I want materials delivered as late as possible, so they're not sitting there on the jobsite over a weekend or something.” If completion of the framing is delayed, for example, MS Project will automatically change all the start dates for subsequent tasks.

The automatic updating makes schedule revision a snap. But it's the Internet that brings the real power to Westmoreland's method. He tried MS Project's “Team Inbox” function to send e-mail updates to all his subcontractors, but that quickly proved too cumbersome: “Subcontractors would get an e-mail every time the schedule changed. Well, if you're doing 25 or 30 houses at one time, and there are at least 150 specific tasks per job, one subcontractor might be assigned to 300 tasks at any given time. So every time the schedule changed he'd get 300 e-mails.” Worse yet, the system required the subs to open and respond to each e-mail. “I was getting back 4,000 e-mails a day,” says Westmoreland. “I really didn't like that.”

In the end, Westmoreland hired an IT contractor to build him a custom Web site linked to a database server. He can still create and maintain his updated master schedules on his own desktop computer or on the notebook computer he carries in the field. With the click of a button, a small program on his PC takes the data from MS Project and uploads it to the Web database.

As Westmoreland goes on his daily rounds, he updates the “percent complete” status of each task in his tablet computer; that evening, he pushes his data to the Web and each subcontractor's individual tasks automatically update. “I don't have to try to remember what's supposed to happen next or remember who I called and told them to be there on Wednesday,” he says.

At the online portal, Westmoreland's trade allies can view only the tasks assigned to them, sorting the information by house, by neighborhood, or by start date. Along with the schedules, Westmoreland also posts 11-inch-by-17-inch house plans in PDF format, and specs that provide any details not included in the plans. “We make a framing plan, a plumbing plan, an electrical plan—every trade ally gets to see the plan that applies to their trade,” he says. “And if something goes wrong, everybody knows whose fault it was. There's no verbal communication—it's all written down in the schedule, the plan, or the specs. And if they forget to bring it with them, they can go to the jobsite trailer and download another printout.”

When he hits his stride, Westmoreland says, he can sometimes reverse the process of cascading delays: Continual updates mean that gains in the schedule can also be passed along to advance future start dates. “Suppose it's a beautiful weekend and the framer decides to work Saturday,” he explains. “Well, maybe the electrician or the plumber can get in a little earlier too.” Westmoreland has never built a house in four days (see “A House in Four Days?” page 160), but for one rush job he did complete a 3,500-square-foot house in 47 days. “We had to do a lot of things right to make that work,” he says.

“Ticklers” in the job schedules alert Westmoreland's office manager to query customers about optional upgrades or other decisions. Buyers also get their own access privileges to view the status of their jobs, cutting down on telephone work in the office. And the Realtors who serve as Westmoreland's salesforce in the Realtor-driven Kansas City market also have access to continually updated schedules, enabling them to handle many customer queries and to sell spec homes in progress more effectively.

His system has been so successful, he says, that his subs and suppliers have been asking him how they can get their other builder customers to use it. In response, Westmoreland has invested tens of thousands of dollars in upgrading his Web site to allow secure access for other builders to post their own schedules and other documents. Westmoreland's public-access version of his Web site rolled out in late September.

Use of the Web interface costs $25 per month for each house a builder logs into the system. One benchmark, however, might be for builders to consider the value of time saved talking on the phone. Says Westmoreland, “These days, my total cell phone minutes are less than 100 a month. Before I developed and implemented my Web site, they were in the thousands.”

You can only squeeze so many days out of a construction schedule. But the limits on how fast a house can be constructed may be far lower than most builders imagine. Says Hovnanian's Mark Hodges, “We built a 2,000-square-foot single-family home once in four-and-a-half days. And we didn't do anything radically different—we just assigned work differently. So, for example, the electrician prewired the entire house with seven people in about 90 minutes. Normally, that's a three-man crew, and they take a day and a half or two days. But when one worker goes around the house nailing the outlet boxes while another is in the garage installing the panel and starting to fish the wires up into the rafters, a third person is just pulling wire, and a fourth is snipping the wire and hooking it into the outlets. When they delegate their tasks differently, they are much more efficient and much faster.” The insulating crew completed its work in 30 minutes, says Hodges. “One person was measuring the bays for the insulation, another was cutting it, and a third was installing it.”

Hovnanian devoted a single supervisor to the house for the entire week that it was under construction, says Hodges. “He told me, ‘This is the single best house I've ever built, because I was in it every single minute of every day.' We had zero defect items on that house.” In theory, Hodges points out, “If I give him four weeks of vacation, he can build me 48 perfect houses a year—one a week [the company average is 30 houses per supervisor per year]. Now, that doesn't include winter; it doesn't include a lot of things. But it's a very interesting notion.” ted cushman