Housing Giants - May 9, 2008 - (Page 10)

TECH By Tom Gebes, BuilderMT USE PROCESS MAPPING TO CONTROL YOUR VPOS Variance purchase order costs add up. Efficient and up-to-date systems and software, however, can lessen the blow. PHILIP ROBICHAUD is Calgary, Canada- under $300,000 Canadian dollars to large based Morrison Homes’ information technology manager, and he’s been with the company three of his 15 years in the business. One of his recent tasks was to take the inefficiency — and paper — out of the variance purchase order process. On the job site, Morrison Homes issues a fair number of variance purchase orders for such things such as extra truck loads during excavation, extra gravel, on-site damage or vandalism. Morrison averages about eight to 10 VPOs per home. Morrison Homes is one of Canada’s leading home builders; in 2007, a record year, the company completed 590 homes. In 2008, it will see that number decline due to prevailing market conditions, but it still expects to put up at least 300 homes. The company builds in the Calgary area, and home sizes vary widely, from starter homes of 1,000 square feet that cost 10 HOUSING GIANTS.5.9.08 custom homes of more than $2 million that range upward of 6,000 square feet. The company has been a Calgary-area builder for 45 years, and it has a great reputation. Morrison Homes allocates most of its 100 employees to back office processes and carries 12 site supers; 12 in sales; and another 12 in design and drafting, with a strong reliance on subcontractors. Still, the company battled VPOs – 5,900 of them across 590 starts in 2007. That’s a costly process to maintain. “We determined exactly what each VPO was costing us,” says Robichaud, “because we knew from analysis that the whole organization was spending 19 minutes on each one, as it had to be hand-written and manually processed in the back office. Then we had the back office staff faxing the VPOs to the vendor and manually entering the data in the WWW.HOUSINGGIANTS.COM http://www.buildermt.com/ http://www.morrisonhomes.ca/ http://WWW.HOUSINGGIANTS.COM

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Housing Giants - May 9, 2008 Contents Viewpoint News and Moves Tech M & A The New Housing Demographics

Housing Giants - May 9, 2008

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