What are the results of your hard work?
A result is a consequence, effect or outcome of something. So, if you had to analyze the results of all your hard work over the years, what would your result be? 
So how can you build a name that will deliver results? There are three key factors to help build your name.
 
Reputation: the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something.
Someone of strong character:
Integrity: Doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.
Honor: Fulfill an obligation or keep and agreement.
Strength: the emotional or mental qualities necessary in dealing with situations or events that are distressing or difficult.
Willpower: the power by which a person decides on and initiates action.
 
Credibility: the quality of being trusted and believed in.
The quickest way to lose credibility id taking credit for everything, being humble is critical to having people trust and believe in you.  
If you want people to follow, you need to be well organized, have a plan, execute the plan, and take action when needed and above all help others be successful.
 
Performance: the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Try to follow through and execute everything on time and accurately. Make a list of everything you need to accomplish this week, when it needs to be done by and see if you can get it all mistake free.  
Help implement the process and procedures your company has setup, and treat them like a living document: timely and accurately.
 
Showing up and just doing the job isn’t enough. Everyone on site is doing just that. You need to go above and beyond. Earn the reputation you want! Your results and your name will be remembered.

Here are three steps to help you be successful with your next task. 

Start with Planning:

• Set aside enough time to plan out the work, evaluate the entire process.
• Talk through the sequencing, schedule and budget.
• The planning meetings designed to find an efficient way to construct a project (logistics, sequencing, material and manpower).
• The pre-planning meetings need to be organized with an agenda to break down the objectives into steps, finding critical areas to discuss in detail or items needing research to be followed up later. 
• Define roles and responsibilities and create a follow up action list from the meeting.

 
Set Goals

• Set up team goals: whether it’s a daily, weekly or task specific. Your crew needs to know the objectives.
• Challenge crews to think, finding the best plan before starting the task. 
• When observing a task, find the bottlenecks or the time wasters, what process demands a considerable amount of time to accomplish?
• If you're spending hours greasing or taping bolts before a concrete pour ask yourself if there’s a better like buying cheap pipe foam to cover the bolts, that could speed up the process.

 
Last but not least is to review.

• When completing a task, ask the crew what can we do; to execute the task simpler, quicker or easier? Break it down; find a way to shorten up time consuming task, figure out how to improve the process. Changing a crews thought process might be simple as starting a conversation. Bring it up in the morning meeting, explain the objective (finding ways to eliminate inefficient steps) and how they can develop their own critical thinking.
• Finally, develop and implement change! If they come up with ideas to simplify a task, show them ideas won’t be ignored rather implemented.

 
This is how we become successful.

I want to give a big thanks to this weeks Guest Blogger Nate McMillin, who gives us his perception of the importance of mentoring.  A great read you don't want to miss!!!

​When you think of a mentor, what comes to your mind? You might think of someone who is a teacher, leader, someone wise, or a parent perhaps? The definition of a mentor is: “An experienced or trusted advisor.”  Mentoring can be empowering to a person. A mentor helps you hone your talent, abilities, and skills. They bring out the best within you. They inspire you to do better then you know how. Whether you’re a mentor, or a student you’ll get out what efforts you put in. Having a mentor can be a shortcut to success. As a mentor, you can rise by lifting others. Mentors don’t have all the answers but shares knowledge, and lights a path.  A mentor can make or break you. It’s crucial to find the right mentors. Finding the right mentor can be easily acquired with some effort. If you surround yourself with people who are successful, then you’re on the right path.
Some of the mentors throughout my life have been my father, co-workers, supervisors, and friends. My father mentored, and molded me into who I am today. At work, co-workers mentored, and taught me how to hone my production, skill, resources, accuracy, quality, knowledge and strengths. Surrounding yourself with passionate and successful mentors who are willing to share knowledge, will help sharpen your skills. We’ve all found ourselves at work with the people who are at work to make a paycheck. Then there are those that are passionate. More then likely those individuals there to make a paycheck are in the same position, or are no longer employed. But the passionate individuals have moved up the ranks. Surrounding yourself with the passionate individuals, and having the right mentor is a great way to succeed.
One of the rules of heroes is they usually have a mentor to help shape and mold them. Instilling them with a strong moral code. For example, Spidermans “With great power comes great responsibility.” Mentors teach heroes how to become the hero they are destined to be. It’s the same principle in any trade. A mentor teaches you to become who you are destined to be. Mentors are used in many areas of life including goal setting, physical fitness, weight loss, stress relief, financial planning, marriage, and education to name a few. Mentoring is a great tool to be used in any industry whether its construction, a sport, and can be used in many aspects of life. Sharing knowledge and expertise as a tool is beneficial for individuals and corporations alike. That’s why the “Importance of mentoring” should be embraced and practiced, not just in life, but also in construction trades, to broaden our skills, and knowledge. 

I have a lot of carpenter's asking me how much time and men do they have to complete a certain task. So in this week's blog post we want to look at starting simple to figure how many men and how many hours for a certain task. Take an activity like spot footings, in the picture below there are twelve spot footings highlighted that we are going to use as an example today.  
First, find the estimated/budgeted Man Hours for spot footings.  (460man-hours)
Next, schedule duration for this activity, in this example there is 7 working days to complete the spot footing activity. 
Now, take man-hours and divide by days - 460/7= 65
So you have 65 man-hours a day for a seven day duration to complete the footings. 
Then you want to determine your crew size based of your daily  man-hours
First  take the daily hours 65 and divide by the crew size you would like to have, let's try 10 men. 65/10=6.5 if you have ten guys to stay in budget you could only work on spot footings for 6.5 hours a day, if you have 10 men for 8 hours a day for 7 days.- your total man-hours would be  560 (100 hours over budget)

Let's try a crew size of 8.
65/8.1= 8 so you could have a crew of 8 for eight hours a day for seven days- your total man-hours would be 448 (12 hours under budget). 

There are many factors that come into play when determining crew size and it's easy to get over-whelmed. You have to break apart each task, understand the job flow, sequencing and schedule. But if you start with one task and work all the way through it then move to the next task and so forth, you start to create the data needed for an average crew. Maybe you only need 8 on spot footings but 10 on walls and four on columns, after you know your crew size you can double back to the schedule and see if the sequencing works out where you can get away with a crew size of 14 because of all the trade work or down time in-between activities or on pour days. The more you practice the easier it becomes. 
The important part is that you learn and understand hours/cost on every activity you are part of, and it's never to late to start.  In the case that you are not shown the budget or hours by your Foreman or Supervisor click here for a MH/Unit form that you can start tracking yourself. You want to become great at what you do, so empower yourself to learn, grow and excel above those who don't want to share the information. 

After all the effort you put into the planning and sequencing, you put the plan into action and somehow the execution falls apart because something was out of sequence. Time, money and manpower was wasted because of a break in the link. If you’re a new foreman don’t overlook or dismiss it calling it, saying “that’s construction”, if you want to learn and grow get to the root of a problem by asking “WHY”.
 
For example, let's say you had a concrete pour that went ok, ask yourself:
 
Why was it just ok?
It took longer to pour out, then expected.
 
Why did it take longer than expected?
Because the finishers got behind; it took them a while to get the concrete placed.
 
Why were the finishers getting behind?
They concrete was stiff on the last half.
 
Why?
Because the trucks were starting to back up and the concrete was getting old.
 
Why?
Because we were still working on the slab prep (rebar placement, recess areas etc..) in the morning, while the pour was going on, which caused the finishers to wait on us at times.
 
Why were you still working on slab prep?
Because the area was not turned over until 3:00pm the night before.
 
Why was the area turned over late?
Because the dirt contractor was behind schedule.
 
Why were they behind schedule?
because he did not show up on Tuesday.
 
Why did they not show up, did someone forget to call them?
No, they were scheduled but decided another job was more important.
 
So after they were a no show what decisions were made as far as schedule and the pour date?
We had to make the pour, so we waited for them to show up the next day and went back to normal, just trying to get it done.

By asking “WHY” you can see that the pour production was subpar. 
Because the finishers were not able to get the slab placed quickly with fresh concrete they had to work twice as hard to lay it down, because the carpenter crews were still placing rebar and fine grading the gravel, because the area was not turned over to them as scheduled because the dirt contractor did not finish on time because they were not on-site on the day they were supposed to begin the prep. So you can see one missed step cause a chain reaction of events to which caused the un-productive slab pour. If we focus on the problem at the first or second why we will never get to the route cause and will learn only half of our mistake. The problem is decisions not being made right then, whether it's changing sequence of flow (maybe focusing on one area, a certain section so that one half was completely ready for the finishers when they show up, instead of nothing being ready and work needing to be done in all areas).
​
Once a schedule disruption happens, an action item needs to be implemented.
It's like concrete trucks stacking during a big slab pour, you're trying to hurry and pump old, dry concrete before time expires. However, this will cause a chain reaction with stacked trucks behind the one currently being placed, whereas if you remove one of the old trucks from the lineup the next truck will be fresher with more time to place out and so forth down the line.
Flow is what we are trying to achieve to be productive. Every time there's a delay, well this disrupts the flow. So asking why allows us to find and get to the root of the problem. Why is a powerful word if asked continually it will only help you learn and grow.   ​

In the last blog post we talked about how to hit the ground running in a new supervisory role. I thought in this post we would dive a little deeper into a couple of the points we made.

It obviously starts with getting to know the team, but how much effort do you really put into this task? If you’re anything like me it’s easier said than done. I’m a bit of an introvert, so it takes me more effort than probably most people to really get to know the rest of the team. You should be looking to build relationships right off the bat, the quicker you gain trust in others and visa verse the more effective the team will be. Be sure to get to know the whole team, not just your superiors but also your subordinates. Depending on your role you should also look to build relationships with your vendors and suppliers. It is during this process of building relationships that you should be getting a good sense of strengths and weaknesses.

When thinking about our own strengths and weaknesses we really need to be completely honest with ourselves. We all know it’s almost a prerequisite in the construction industry to have an Alpha personality type, but don’t confuse confidence with a character flaw of being overly prideful. If we can’t admit we need help with anything we are destine for failure. We aren’t building alone, everyone one your team has something to offer. We as supervisors need to find out what that is to make sure we have the right people doing the right jobs, and that we have the support needed to overcome our own weaknesses. I have seen this over and over again, the supervisor who "knows it all", the guy who has the my way or the highway attitude. In this day and age that management style just doesn't work anymore. We also need our team to be open to constructive criticisms and weak spots in their fabric. Maybe you have a good communicator who isn't the best planner, if you pair them up with a good planner who isn't the best communicator you will have a stronger team. Just remember it all starts with honesty.

Teamwork, what does it mean? Its definition is- A cooperative or a coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interest of a common cause.

I’m sure all of us at some point in our construction career have experienced the people that try to play hero, or want to build the whole job on their own. When this happens the moral on the crew and the attitude of the guys that work around this person go downhill. When your crew has a bad attitude or low moral things tend to slow down and the quality of work suffers. All this can happen from the one person thinking that they have to do everything them self. Typical the person trying to do everything themselves think it makes them look good to the boss, which on some jobs the boss thinks that without this one person they wouldn't have been able to get it done. When in some cases there might be other workers who can do things better and faster than this one person.
 
I was on a job fairly recently where there was a guy that thought he was the only person who could do everything but the work that had no glory. And the guys that were doing all the little stuff that nobody thinks about that much were better at this certain task. I’m not saying that the guys that knew more should have been the only guys to do this task, but if this said person would have worked together with these guys the job would have been faster and the quality of the work would have been better. It wouldn’t have always been a mad panic on the mornings of the pour to try and get the wall buttoned up possibly sacrificing the quality of the work and safety.
 
​This is why teamwork on a construction crew is so import, if we all don’t work together things can fall apart real quick, the schedule could start to slip behind, owner/architects unhappy with the quality of the work being performed. Driving people on your crew to be unhappy and quite, these are all things that could happen unless we all choose to work together as a team. 

A special thanks to Ryan Dalton for writing this weeks guest blog!
Click here to learn more about Ryan

Human nature is to fear the unknown, it is the path of least resistance to "stick to what we know". Don't get me wrong, we should strive to perfect what we do in our current roles weather it's carpentry, place and finish, layout, crew oversight, or project oversight. But if we get too comfortable in that role only, how are we going to advance? Our industry typically gives us little preparation and formal training to take the next step in our careers, few and far between are the leaders who separate themselves by learning the skills needed to advance. If you step up and take the initiative you will be noticed. We should all try to learn new technologies that will help us be more efficient.

How do you know what tools you need in the next role? If you aren't being mentored, you need to be vocal, ask what you need to be working on and learning, ask to be mentored, and or course ask us, Constructorator was built for this exact purpose! Reach out to us if you have questions we haven't answered in our existing content.

I can tell you first hand the labor shortage the industry has been predicting for the last few years is real and it's here. The opportunities are there, the whole country is in need of qualified field leaders. If the advancement you have your sights set on seems out of reach in your organization, I can almost guarantee someone is looking for a person with your skill set and ambition. This might be the hardest part, overcoming the fear of the unknowns in leaving your company. I know it can be scary, but how will you know how far your career can go if you limit it to your comfort zone within one organization? I'm not telling all of you to put your two weeks in tomorrow, but ask yourself if you're on the right path for your future career goals. We will never improve unless we push ourselves out of our comfort zone.

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