Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009 - (Page 23)

an accounting issue, but the accountants cannot track down a missing credit if they are not notiﬁed of the return. Culture of “close enough.” The residential building industry has operated for years on the premise that material quantities need only be “close enough” to produce acceptable ﬁnancial results and to avoid material shortages. The industry does not have a continuous improvement culture and operates in a classic cyclical fashion. When times are good, builders and trades make lots of proﬁt, and when times are tough, they share the pain of losing money. This culture and mentality causes signiﬁcant volatility in the ﬁnancial performance of all the players in the residential supply chain and destroys millions of dollars of value through every cycle. tion. Then, compare takeoff quantities to the current materials packages, and create a new target budget. Look for areas where less costly products could be substituted without impacting the design or structural integrity of the house. Builders may then work with their architectural and engineering staff to decide whether to make these changes. More detailed takeoffs improve potential savings. Using the drywall example again, do a separate takeoff for the ﬁrst and second ﬂoor walls, the ﬁrst and second ﬂoor ceiling sheets and the garage. This helps both the builder and the trade partner get a better grasp of where shortages are occurring and where they can save money. This system has been proven to signiﬁcantly reduce waste factors: Builders who have implemented it are now working with waste factors of just 4 percent for panels and 8 percent for dimensional lumber. Stormwater Management Systems Power Takeoffs Luckily, there’s a straight forward ﬁx for the above problems, and it has an almost immediate payback for the builder. Much of this waste can be eliminated by working with the individual trades on cutting direct costs, speciﬁcally the amount of material that goes into a home. Many purchasing managers have been told to renegotiate their contracts, but because they let trade partners ﬁgure materials, they do not have enough information to get into a good negotiation position. Working with a third party, the purchasing manager can gather the information needed to negotiate the best contract price. An accurate takeoff is a powerful negotiating tool, especially when it’s backed up with a system for helping trade partners work with the new takeoff amounts. In addition, reasonable unit pricing for installation labor brings further cost partners work with the transparency, making it easier to realize potential cost savings and providing new takeoff amounts objective baseline for future interaction with trades and suppliers. This is not a value-engineering process. Builders do not have to change their plans or specs. Instead, builders should “unbundle” materials and labor and identify the exact amount of materials needed for each phase of construc- Our Product Line Includes: ° Detention Protect downstream channels from erosion. • Recharge Preserve existing ground water table elevation. • Infiltration Temporarily store WQv allowing infiltration into soil. • Filtration Remove 80% TSS, nutrients, hydrocarbons and trace metals. • Separation Remove suspended solids, free floating oil and debris. www.rotondo-es.com Circle 195 • or www.SLDTonline.com/webcard www.SLDTonline.com 23 http://www.rotondo-es.com http://www.rotondo-es.com http://www.SLDTonline.com/webcard http://www.SLDTonline.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009

Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009 Contents Our Voice Modern Flood Disasters Origin of the Sustainability Movement SLDI in Focus Calendar Build Smart Product Innovation Takeoff and Cost Management Industry News Products & Services Advertiser Index Editorial Board SLDT Resources Last Word

Sustainable Land Development Today - February 2009

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