Quality hits home with buyers, but the benefits of quality to a builder are tough to gauge. We asked Brad Oberg, Chief Technology Officer of Integrated Building and Construction Solutions (IBACOS), an industry consulting firm, for his thoughts on what quality means.
Question: Brad, we hear a lot about quality and quality homes in this industry. What is quality?
Answer: I think of quality as a process that empowers builders to meet customer expectations while making a profit and to preserve its profit for future investment, dividends, and growth. The problem with quality is that it's tough to measure. Other more tangible measurements of success weigh on builders, overshadowing quality for a builder's people:
Architects are charged with the task of creating unique floor plans and elevations, but not necessarily with showing a level of detail in the plans that would ensure durability and energy efficiency.
Purchasing staff are asked to find certified labor and cost-effective materials, but not necessarily the labor and materials most likely to prevent callbacks.
Divisional leaders are measured on production, specifically, the number of closings per month, quarter, and year. Managers have to ask, "Did we meet production goals, regardless of labor and material shortages?" Bonuses are tied to meeting production goals, because the financial benefits of production are fairly easy to quantify. It's harder to measure the financial benefits of quality construction.
Superintendents support the divisional leadership's goal of productivity. They have to focus on scheduling efficiency, site cleanliness, storm water compliance, and safety, but not necessarily quality, which is harder to see and control on a jobsite.
Wall Street demands simple metrics, such as "2,000 new homes" and "10% increase." Quality is difficult to demonstrate to shareholders.
Building inspectors are expected to provide a safety net for builders. In the field, when someone asks, "Are you guys ready for next step?" the answer is often "Yes, we got the inspection, so everything's installed right." But building inspectors are expected to focus on code compliance, not quality.
Local trades build the homes for the builder. Builders rely on trade contracts and scopes of work with trades to ensure quality. As a trade, if you begin work, you've implicitly certified the prior work as acceptable. The superintendent relies on each successive trade, who infers by beginning work that a quality job has been done up to that point.
In custom construction, multiple trades are onsite at one time. There's a natural sense of coordination between the trades, because they have face time with each other and can talk through issues they encounter. They may not have a chance to address quality, but at least they have some time to coordinate their installations. In production homebuilding, there's just one trade onsite at a time. The trade has to do the job they came to do and then leave the site broom-cleaned and ready for the next trade. There's no chance for coordination or integration between trades.
Because each player in the homebuilding process has such a narrow, encapsulated role, quality can be hard to achieve. And since quality is hard to quantify and measure, players in the construction process aren't specifically charged with ensuring quality. Quality is generally viewed as a customer relations issue. It isn't viewed as something we build in, but rather something we apply as needed.
The way forward
We can't build all homes perfectly, because the world isn't perfect. Sometimes, we encounter unforeseen problems in the field, and we need customer service to fix issues after construction. But what if quality were the job of everyone in the process? Customer service would have fewer repair calls and more time to truly service homeowners, helping them maintain a quality home, instead of mitigating costly issues. I think the results of referral growth, market expansion, and profit preservation would be staggering.
