Welcome To Home Building

Good morning Reader, Let's say you've been reading my last few emails where I've been talking about the importance of putting together a consistent schedule template. And let's say you recognize that it is important to have a baseline to measure against. Let's even say you've locked your Superintendents in a room and created the baseline. Now you may be saying to yourself, "Now, what?!?" OR - truth be told - you might be saying, "Yeah. That's pie-in-the-sky thinking and there ain't no way my...

Good morning, Reader. On this snow-covered morning (at least here in Central PA), it seems like a good morning to gather around a fireplace and hear a story told by yours truly. Imagine me sitting in a comfy chair in my robe and slippers. A bubble pipe hanging from my mouth and a big storybook in my lap. I open it up and start to read - and you're transported to the magical world of new home construction. The Three Superintendents Once upon a time, there was a Home Builder who just wanted to...

Happy Tuesday, Reader Last week, I wrote about how Home Builders often take schedules one-at-a-time (like I did). And the problem with that was that you just keep doing things the same way - and - you never learn or get any better. So - how do you start getting control of schedules in a homebuilding business? You create a Schedule Template. What's a Schedule Template? Quite simply, a Schedule Template is just a pre-determined set of construction activities that are arranged in an order to...

Happy Tuesday, Reader! If you're trying to get your homebuilding business organized, you may not have given much thought to your construction schedules. After all, your houses need to get built. And you may have built houses the same way for years. Maybe you're proud of the number of days it takes you to build a single house typically. Or maybe you like the thrill of figuring things out as you go. But - if you're looking at a single house schedule every time you build a new house, you're...

Hey there, Reader. Happy New Year!!! As we all get ready to flip the calendar to January, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on what things I'd like to teach you in 2025. Truth be told, I've been more lax on emailing than I should have been - but - I'm not one to send an email just to send it. I want it to be valuable to you. Someone asked me about standard carpet sizing for new home construction - and - I thought it might be a good topic to say goodbye to 2024 and "hello" to 2025....

Happy Tuesday, Reader. And - for those of you in the United States - Happy Thanksgiving to you! As you get ready to fill your bellies with good food and your eyes with football, Home Builders are thinking about budgeting for their company's operations for the new year (if, ahem, they haven't done so already). I've found that many homebuilding executives have sort of "fallen into" their roles from within the industry. As such, they haven't really learned how to do things like "budgeting" for...

Happy Tuesday, Reader! A few months back, the folks at Moasure provided me with one of their devices (complete with stick) to try out and report my thoughts on it. And that’s exactly what I did – sharing my posts on my LinkedIn profile. I shared several videos and posts on why someone in the homebuilding industry might consider putting that old tape measure on the shelf and – instead – start using the device that is probably in your hands more often than previously-mentioned tape measure. Um,...

Happy Tuesday, Reader! I spent two weeks traveling around Europe last month (a late celebration of 30 years of wedded bliss) - and - it was definitely a whirlwind. Always keeping an eye on homebuilding activities, I was struck by something I saw in Lucerne. Here in the U.S., we have to stake off a house before we start. If you're not sure what that means, it's just laying out the perimeter of the house using (you guessed it) wood or iron stakes. This stake-off lets the inspector, Home Buyer,...

Happy Tuesday, Reader! As I've been watching the news about the devastation in the Carolinas and Southeast United States, I'm hoping this email is finding you safe and secure in your home and not dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Events like this - where people lose their homes and businesses - are heartbreaking. Sadly, they seem to be happening too often - whether they be natural occurrences like a hurricane or tornado - or - are from the hands of folks who should know better...