TOPIC: Becoming Effiecient

Here is my first blog entry for my websites. It seems to deal with an issue tha a few of us are having in the inspection world. I hope it is helpful to all that are dealing with this problem. 


                                                               Becoming Efficient

Probably about mid point in my career as a union carpenter, the elements of the business started to have an adverse effect on me. Here I was working as hard as or harder than many of the other guys on site and getting paid the same. The operative word here is hard. I decided at that point to enter a way of life that was frowned upon by the unions and start piece working drywall.

The way this worked was if you were installing drywall on a 14’ high wall the bottom 10’ piece would be your “stand up” board, the remaining 4’ would be called top fill. The stand ups had a unit dollar value to them, the top fill was usually by the square foot.

I was going along for some time and showing some success at making extra dollars doing this. There were a few guys that were noticeably faster than me so I started to watch a little of what they were doing. One guy in particular his name is Russell, had his routine so finely polished that there was virtually no wasted effort in his routine.

I figured if I could mimic Russell, I would then be as fast as him. Makes perfect sense right? I tried and I tried and I did improve my speed, but all I was doing was taking my own wasted efforts and wasting them faster. I then had to step back and realize that it is a rare occasion that one person can mimic another at a task and come up with the same result.  If every room that we entered to install drywall were exactly the same, then one could make that argument.

Well at that point I decided to step back and review what I was doing instead of what others were doing. I came to the conclusion that almost anyone who installs drywall can pick a board up off the pile and put it where it goes in roughly the same amount of time. It was the little thing that I was needlessly doing that was killing me. I removed half of the tools that I was carrying around in my belt and weighing me down. I changed the way I loaded the screw on the tip of the screw gun. I changed the way I loaded drywall on the a-frame cart that I worked from. I streamlined the way I did things and the end result was unbelievable. None of the things I did had an effect on the quality of the end result. I just changed the way I did them.

I was never able to replicate the amount of productivity that Russell was able to achieve, but I greatly increased my own. That was my goal. There will always be someone better at a task than someone else. If that were not true, sports records would not exist, neither would the incentive to break them.

I am using this personal experience to send the message to others to sit back, take a deep breath and review what you are doing. Then say do I really need to do that to get to my desired result. Take all suggestions and weigh them out to see if they work for you. No one can tell you how to become efficient. They can only give you guidelines and ideas, the final result is from you yourself streamlining your operation.

Sounds like LEAN MANUFACTURING Drew. I learned quite a bit about that in a past life. Good article and something we should all try to think about at least once a week. Will come in very handy when trying to cut expenses also.

Drew great article!

Very Nice article Drew.

Good article!  I think I'm going to run with this a bit.

Another thing that can be added here is K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid. You don't need the most expensive tools or latest gadgetry to be a good inspector. Yes they can serve a purpose but most of the time the basic tools will serve us the best. Develope a method for looking at kitchens and stick to it, and repeat for other areas as well. Use a bedroom, for example, when I walk into one, the first thing I do is shut the door and look for damage behind the door. Then I scan counterclockwise around the room for wall damage. Then I check outlets, move on to windows. Next I check the ceiling, and then the floor. Pick any order you want,    but come up with a system that will fit most homes and stick with it. Obviously, every home is differrent, but try to stick to a script, this also helps avoid missing things. Just my opinion, now I have to get back to Easter.