WRITE-UP ON CONSTRUCTION PRODUCTIVITY AWARDS - Essay Example

? TeamBuild's business model's difference begins in the From our founding, we have always considered ourselves an organization that builds things as a team. But we don't just build objects, we build teams. We build each other's confidence, skills and abilities. As our organization has grown, we've thought about it not like a challenge but as just another thing to plan and construct. Most companies worry about growth: Idealistic founders are afraid that, as the company grows, their influence will decline or their values will be forgotten or that they will become the new Enron. But we at TeamBuild think that this is an engineering problem just like building a house. A solid foundation is one that can endure building across all sorts of sizes, and our business and organizational model makes us capable of that challenge. TeamBuild prioritizes teamwork and camaraderie at every stage of its processes and every part of its internal culture. This is the most important way we enhance productivity: By making sure that every single one of our members is providing their own unique skill set, we guarantee that the whole is far, far greater than the sum of its parts. Our corporate social responsibility initiatives are a source of great pride, and we also think that they're just good business. Our team-building philosophies are integrity, teamwork, environmental care, commitment and quality. Our recent changes to our business model demonstrate this ability to change, adapt and create new options for growth. In 2006, we formed a High Performance Team or HPT with senior management and top members. The idea was to expand our organizational house by dividing into three teams and embrace three initiatives: Strategic alliances, people and in-house subcontractors. Top management set the stage by putting down the vision, the mission to complete it, the goals to complete that mission and to provide benchmarks to measure that success, and a model (attached as the figure, 'Teambuild House'). Our vision is to become a leading integrated service provider through process innovation and strategic alliances. For the communities we serve, the customers who seek out our assistance, and the people who will end up living in or working in the buildings we provide, we feel that we owe being as integrated as possible and providing as many different services as possible: A one-stop-shop. Our work on projects like Cerelia Vista, the Canadian International School and the Marina Bay Golf Course show that appeal of that mission. By being integrated service providers, we were able to create architecturally appealing designs. We were able to make sure that each of our customers got the exact solution for their needs and organization. Productivity is guaranteed when the producer is capable of handling every element of a project in-house. We avoid the “mythical man-hour” this way too: All of our team members are up to date on all of our projects. We are proud that we were able to design complex buildings for complex needs without needing to bring in excessive outside help. By aiming to be the best integrated service provider, we guarantee long-term productivity and profitability. Why hire many companies when you can hire one? Why risk worrying about each new contractor and sub-contractor being qualified, bonded, and ready for the task? If one company can handle the task, how much easier is that for the customer? We feel that, when the customer only needs to worry about one thing, providing us with the information to complete their goals, we serve their needs to the utmost. Our mission is threefold. First: We aim to deliver quality products and services to our customers. Many people think of construction and project design as a “hard” task, with very little need for interpersonal skills. We instead think that the process of providing products, the completed building, is inextricable from and intertwined with the process of providing services. We provide our customer many services. We give them ease of mind. People don't just want a good house or a good school six months down the line: They want to know that their organization's money or their own hard-earned funds aren't being wasted every step of the line. In our view, quality service doesn't just mean reliable brick and mortar, safe glass and solid foundations: It means making sure that the customer, at every step along the way, is assured. Part of that process is information: Making sure that all of our members know how the project is going, and making sure that the client is constantly kept abreast of changes. The construction business is about quality. Building a bad, rushed job is just giving your competition work five years down the line. Building it right the first time means that the only time you get invited back is for repairs, and so you can move on to the next task. There's always another building. We want to generate return to our shareholders. This mission goes beyond the standard legal requirements and investor boilerplate. Our shareholders are a member of our team too. We want our shareholders to believe in our mission, and the best way to do that is to show that our mission is worth something by putting our money where our mouth is. We want every team member in our organization to be getting a return on their investment. Our workers are getting experience and skills, our management is getting the opportunity to continue to improve, and our investors are reaping the rewards of their belief in the company. Finally, we want to make a rewarding work environment for employees. We would do this even if it wasn't in our best interest: A company that reaches forward on the backs of employees who are not satisfied with their lot in life is not a company that deserves to see the light of day. But our rewarding work environment is in the best interests of management and shareholders. We aim to make sure that every employee goes home with something far more valuable than money: Dignity and a certainty that they are working in something they can be proud of. Good buildings come from good workers. We want our workers to be able to point to schools, parks, golf courses, and homes they built fifty years later and say, a smile on their face, “I spent a year of my life building that and I wouldn't want it back for the world”. Rewarding work environments provide for our long-term productivity by making sure that our workers stick around. We've seen dozens of hatchet jobs pasted together by inexperienced people thanks to callous management that thought they could just replace anyone who wasn't working out. The longer a worker stays around, the more valuable he is. A team is a fragile organism: Too many of its organs, no matter how seemingly small, fail, and the team starts to die. We think that our team is something unique, and because of that, it has decades worth of man-years as a group to draw upon: It is literally priceless. Our strategy for long-term growth is complex, but centers once again on bringing people into our team. We will engage in vertical integration, becoming more coordinated, having better property development and more funds on hand. We are expanding overseas into Malaysia and China. Our team members in those countries are going to realize how special of a workplace they have been hired into, and our customers will get a quality of experience that they have never experienced before. Our strategic alliances with other companies and with customers like government agencies and major companies bring more people working together with the TeamBuild team, and together, we can build something great. We have vertically integrated with internal and external sub-contractors so we can get a mix between outside approaches and internal control. We use these contractors for reinforcing concrete structural elements, architectural elements, and metal and steel. Our overseas expansion in Myanmar includes a training centre, once again showing our commitment to worker development. We have been engaging in acquisitions and mergers in order to gain more expertise. Our strategic alliances include external specialists, and we maintain our close relationships with our customers by getting them involved on the literal and figurative groundfloor. We are ISO certified and use PEP to cut the learning curve, BCP to control operations cost and supporting functions from administration and finance to streamline. Advanced technologies we've adopted over the last three years that have increased our productivity have included enhancing our green acumen so as to win the BCA “Green and Gracious Reward”. Being green is just smart business practice: We use recycled materials, recycle and re-use our office materials, have embraced ecologically-friendly products, design our buildings to be energy efficient, maintain communications around our places of work so as to not disturb our neighbors, and reduce inconvenience to the. Nothing is less productive than a worker arguing with an angry neighbor, and nothing builds up resentment for a new project more quickly than the noise and inconvenience of it being built. The green industry has immense growth potential. People are increasingly realising that it makes no sense to build buildings that are toxic to the environment or to use toxic materials. We are embracing technologies that allow us to offer green, sustainable options for the future. Our businesses don't sink into the landscape and hurt the communities we work in: Instead, they are investments into those communities. The other new technologies we have embraced have been our radical designs in line with the best of new design philosophies. Our work on Ecoville, for example, is a sign of our startling new opportunities. We have created a building with all the modern amenities like a fantastic view, BBQ, children's playground and so forth while making it ecologically sustainable and sensible. Through embracing new technologies alongside established wisdoms about building teams, providing value to shareholders and being beholden to communities, our business model has created clear opportunities for growth into the next decade and beyond. Singapore, China and Malaysia are on the cusp of the future. That future will be made in our buildings. Read More