Customer Focused Construction & Communications

A successful customer experience drives all great businesses. But do we truly know how to drive successful customer relationships?

Proactive communication is at the heart of all business relationships, but it is sometimes very difficult to accomplish effective customer communications through email, texting and instant messaging. Customer focused communication is an important marketing approach that includes positioning the firm and its team members through strong operations, collaborative planning and great communications from beginning to end.

This session is intended to give you best practices, strategies and tips for improving the overall customer communications platform in your company and is designed for executive, senior and mid-level managers.

  • Specific goals of this full-day session include:
  • Define the right and wrong ways to communicate
  • Examine the elements of strong proactive communication with a
    customer
  • Develop a “Customer-Centric” philosophy through operations
  • Examine practical applications of customer service as well as tips and ideas to become a better customer ambassador
  • Understand the traits of highly productive teams

Participants will learn:

  • New approaches and best practices for communicating with the customers
  • Increase their awareness of their own communication habits
  • Understand the importance of customer communication as a branding and
    positioning tool
  • Develop a system to enhance communications throughout all phases of a
    project
  • Create an ‘no-surprise’ communications environment
    Instructor

Randy Nemchin works with clients in all construction sectors to improve company, team, and individual performance. With more than 20 years of experience in training, employee development, and process improvement, Nemchin applies his in-depth knowledge of human relations to enhance the overall success of organizations. His energetic classroom style, passion for the learning process and natural sense of humor all help him create an effective learning environment for participants.

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Project Communication

Kindly be advised that the Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA) and Massachusetts Construction Advancement Program (MCAP) will be holding an educational seminar featuring the well-known speaker Kevin Dougherty.

This program is designed to improve your project profitability. Project Communication will help the sheet metal contractor and their production teams take charge of projects and determine the most profitable way to proceed.

This program will help attendees understand the importance of establishing communication protocols, along with all the documentation needs and standards. This program will cover the importance of knowing what you own and how it will/can impact the job. We will take a unique look at how improving communication and team work between design, estimating, project management, and production can and will improve profitability.

This is a “hands” on program which will get the juices flowing and is applicable to anyone who is involved and has an impact of the projects profitability.

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Financial Management w/ FMI

Financial management is a hallmark of great organizations. Collections, billing, cost management and ethical profit maximization are not the sole province of the controllers and CFO’s. In fact, all company and project team members of firm have a stake in strong financial management.

The session will demystify financial concepts and reporting methods to help project team members and other non-financial team members understand how a project is managed profitably. The session will also review how a job cost report is just one leg of an income statement for a firm.

The goals of this session include:

  • Understand the fundamentals of sound financial management, from
    the project to the firm
  • Create an instinct for being a “Business Manager”
  • Identify the controllable costs that “move the needle” for any firm
  • Understand how financial instruments are affected by job cost
    changes, change orders, labor productivity, cash collections, among
    other factors.

Participants will learn:

  • An understanding of the economics of productivity and financial management
  • An opportunity to examine best practices that drive productivity
  • How to develop critical implementation approaches

This course is intended for key field leaders and project managers who are
leading project teams and have responsibility for project results.

Instructor

Gregg M. Schoppman, a principal with FMI, specializes in the areas of productivity and project management. He leads FMI’s project management consulting practice. He also heads the consulting management group of FMI’s Florida office.

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The Real Cost of Change Orders

This program is a must for Project Managers who deal with change orders.  This workshop walks all attendees through the life of a change order.  From what is a change and types of changes, to calculating non-direct costs using fill-in-the-blank worksheets (available only from this workshop) to presenting mock change orders calculated in class to a professional Disputes Review Board (DRB).  Following the presentations, the DRB presents their counter-offers to each presenting group and gives them feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of each.

PresentersTroy Aichele, Aichele & Associates, LLC, David Ashcraft, Advantage Learning Systems, Inc.

 

Attendees of this program will learn: 

1) Describe different types of changes and the impact costs associated with them.

2) Use specific tools to price, analyze and document change order impact pricing.

3) Demonstrate understanding of the vocabulary associated with complex change orders.

4) Present a cumulative impact change order based on a case study scenario.

5) Improve effectiveness at selling change order entitlement and impact costs.

 

Who should attend?  This seminar will benefit Project Managers with at least 3-4 years of experience who price and sell change orders.

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Alpha Dog Workshop w/ Mark Breslin

Mark Breslin is an author, speaker, CEO and influencer at the highest levels of business in North America. He has spent decades advising CEOs and senior leaders in business, government, labor and nonprofit arenas.  Influencing groups from 50 to 5,000 at a time, Mark drives home the lessons needed for positive change that create profound results in the workplace.

Based on his book Alpha Dog: Leading Managing and Motivating in the Construction Industry this leadership-training program provides concrete lessons for construction professionals who want to improve team and individual performance.

The training program is designed to make an immediate impact with those involved in field operations. The curriculum touches on all leadership levels, provides a strategic look at the “homegrown nature” of leadership development. It includes specific recommendations on how to build a new leadership culture in a company or organization of any size. Former participants include project managers, project engineers, foremen, superintendents and other managers.

Lesson plans include the following:

  • Alpha leadership skills and characteristics
  • Examine and challenge your mindset as leader
  • Improve communication strategy and practices
  • Ways to encourage positive change with your team
  • How to use influence to enhance performance
  • How to better motivate others
  • How to make better, faster and smarter decisions
  • How to delegate for best results
  • How to be or find a mentor
  • And much more!

The Alpha Leadership workshop is based on real-world experiences, life changing and powerful in its relevance for construction professionals to adopt new leadership methods and behaviors.

The training program’s curriculum includes a useful Action Plan on how leaders can tackle these challenges immediately head on, and leverage them into higher team and individual performance.

Register Here!

Leveraging Lean Construction as a Competitive Strategy Workshop

Join Tom Richert, Principal of LeanProject for an introductory seminar on how to best utilize lean construction as a competitive advantage. This is the first of two lean workshops held by the BTEA and Tom Richert. This seminar is intended for senior managers and owners who are interested in better understanding lean construction.

This workshop addresses how lean management practices create financial benefits through streamlining of work processes, increases in profit velocity, and deeper engagement on the part of employees. It includes a mix of interactive simulations and facilitated discussions so participants can understand the business and human benefits of adopting a lean work ethic.
The day demonstrates how companies undertaking a shift toward lean experience greater productivity while creating a challenging and rewarding work environment.

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Lean Construction Jobsite Practices

Join Tom Richert, Principal of LeanProject for an seminar on how to best implement lean construction. This is the second of two lean workshops held by the BTEA and Tom Richert. This seminar is intended for project managers and operations staff who are interested in how to better implement lean principles into practice.

This workshop introduces several common lean practices trade contractors can apply on projects, regardless of whether the general contractor is using lean. These practices include the Last Planner® System, 5S organization, visual management, and balanced workflow planning.

These practices have been demonstrated to increase productivity and reduce the level of unplanned work and resulting risk. The day provides an awareness of how work is planned has a dramatic impact on the level of productivity in the field.

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Leadership for Managers Seminar w/ FMI

This program is being held in collaboration with other union employer associations. For this full day workshop, companies are encouraged to send anyone that is currently in a leadership position and is trying to improve their ability to provide purpose, direction and motivation from foremen to executives.

As managers, our role is to plan, lead, organize and control, yet leadership tends to be one of the least developed skill sets in the industry. This intensive one-day program focuses on understanding what it takes to lead from the perspective of the individual leader, the people they lead and the organization. This is a capstone course of our three-part series with FMI including Organizational Excellence in March and Project Excellence in May. It is designed to complement both those courses.

Agenda: 

The Leader

  • Leader development process
  • Perceptions and biases
  • Decision Making

 

The Led

  • Motivation
  • Power and Influence
  • Team Dynamics and Cohesion
  • Conflict Management
  • Counseling/Feedback

 

The Organization

  • Organizational Culture
  • Organizational Change
  • Socialization

 

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A Foreman’s Field Guide To Developing Your Workforce

BTEA and MCAP are pleased to announce that Nic Bittle will be conducting an extended seminar for supervisors and foremen of our contributing contractors.

In A Foreman’s Field Guide to Developing Your Workforce, Nic will walk your foremen and supervisors through how to develop their team for long-term success.  As natural mentors on the jobsite it is up to the Foremen and Supervisors to develop their crew to be the next leaders of the industry.

In this program your Supervisor/Foreman will learn:

  • The 4 Core Competencies lacking in most of the workforce entering the industry today.
  • How to develop those competencies within your team while on the job.
  • How to develop each team member so that everyone communicates on a higher level.
  • The tips, tricks, tactics, and techniques a foreman and/or supervisor must master to effectively lead in today’s market.

Register HERE

Field Based Project Management

Kindly be advised that the Building Trades Employers’ Association (BTEA) and SMACNA Boston will be holding two quality educational seminars to be held on Wednesday, March 28th, 2018 at the Westin Waltham Boston, from 7:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Guest speaker will be Kevin Dougherty, a nationally recognized speaker in the construction industry.

 

The second seminar will be held for Foremen/Supervisors in the afternoon. Lunch will be provided prior to the seminar.

Foreman Course Description:  “Field Based Project Management”

This program is designed to get the field to understand the importance of the project management process, and provide them with the tools to improve and insure profitability goals are met. This program will touch on pre-planning, job coordination, and dealing with the other job trades, the need for jobsite organization, jobsite negotiations and many more real world topics.

 

Register HERE