Best Practices
Best Practices
Floodproof on a Floodplain
An impressive addition to the IDEA Home series, the NEWLOOK Experience Home is a master class in engineering and creative design, with builder Michael Freiburger out-thinking an exceptionally tricky lot
Business
Defining Outdoor Living in 2024
Residential experts weigh in on outdoor living trends in new report
Construction
How to Air Seal the Garage
A poorly sealed wall or ceiling between the garage and the main house can let harmful fumes into the living space
Business
Taking Advantage of Incentives Through Weatherization
Industry insider Kristen Lewis walks us through the basics and benefits of weatherization
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Best Practices
Lean Design Blog: One small item that can save you $100 per house
I catch myself from time to time spending money on things that I just don’t need to. Whether it’s the cool action video I think I will watch after…
Best Practices
Flat empowered organizational structures
Flat, team based and empowered organizations have the potential to out-perform tall hierarchical organizations in most every competitive industry and…
Leadership
Mark Richardson: The Power of Three
By mastering the techniques of the power of three, builders and sales professionals can save time and boost their close rate.
Best Practices
Grand getaways: two larger-than-life custom vacation homes
These vacation homes are anything but the stereotypical beach shack or cabin in the woods.
Best Practices
Like changing a wheel while the car is still moving
Process improvement can often be received with impatience and inflated expectations of its impact. One of the regular problems is that a particular…
Best Practices
Don’t paint yourself into a corner and create a negative work environment
Often managers set goals for employees such as a minimum number of units to be produced each week and once this is achieved on a regular basis, then…
Best Practices
Back to Basics: Checklists and clearly documenting errors to reduce costs
Checklists and audits may be one of the most basic approaches to quality but they frequently lead to problems of accurate data collection. A common…
Best Practices
Step by step process diagrams for performance excellence: NHQA
NHQ Award winning builder, NHQA Judge and consultant Tom Gillespie has developed a set of process diagrams that provide an overview of the intent…
Leadership
Lean Building Blog: There is no future in pessimism
Our business picked up in late 2011, started the New Year off well, and we were deluged at the IBS show, beginning with a standing-room-only…
Best Practices
Sometimes risk management is as simple as listening to your customers
Recently I’ve seen a financial company misplace $30k, a health care organization twice have a patient end up back in ER and a manufacturer face a…