Reinventing the wheel can take a lot of time. So why not consider benchmarking best practices. The 2011 National Housing Quality Award Winners featured in the October edition of Professional Builder give three wonderful examples. Wathen-Castanos Hybrid Homes, Charter Homes and Haseko Construction.
The 2010 October edition of Professional Builder Magazine features the three winners of the National Housing Quality Award.
Wathen Castanos
Charter Homes
and Haseko Construction
How do you compare to them? What best practices can you adapt from them? What quality tools are they using that you can try? If the NHQA has helped them it can help you! Why not apply ? If you want to look outside the industry the link below will provide you with a list of all the National Baldrige winners, many have links to provide a ‘summary award application’ for free download from this page. They list the tools, metrics, training etc that they have used. The companies include small business, service and manufacturing. See what THEY are doing to drive performance.
http://www.quality.nist.gov/Contacts_Profiles.htm
Finally, if you want to find out more information on a Case Study of a builder that has implemented quality for well over 10 years check out this link to get a detailed behind the look at Veridian Homes
http://www.toolbase.org/Best-Practices/Quality-Management/quality-management-high-performance-homes
AND for more information on the impact of quality take a look at this link The Cost of Quality in Homebuilding.
http://www.toolbase.org/Best-Practices/Quality-Management/quality-economics
NEXT TIME, The Importance of Process Management in Green Building
About the Author
Denis Leonard
Denis Leonard has a degree in construction engineering, and an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in quality management. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Quality and has been an Examiner for the Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners, a Judge on the International Team Excellence Competition, and a Lead Judge on the National Housing Quality Award. He has experience as a quality manager in the home building industry as well as construction engineer, site manager, and in training, auditing, and consulting with expertise in strategic and operational quality improvement initiatives. His work has achieved national quality, environmental, and safety management awards for clients.