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Carpentry Contractor Receives Housing Quality Award

Craig Steele, the company’s president and CEO, has been active in the home building industry’s efforts to improve quality for years, most recently serving on the NHQ Program’s Advisory Council. Through the company’s participation in the NHQ Quality Framing Contractor program five years ago, Schuck and Sons began formalizing performance measurements and documenting continuous improvement.

Schuck and Sons managers report that the company’s dedication to quality has resulted in very positive customer feedback. “Many of the builders we work with have welcomed our proactive approach to business,” said Jim Tourek, vice president of customer relations.

At an educational session during January’s International Builders’ Show in Las Vegas, Tourek said that his company rang up $97 million in sales last year, 85% of which included installed services, in I-joists, roof and floor trusses, lumber and plywood and doors and trim.

Tourek discussed several company initiatives that have produced quality results. Among them:

• Employees attend monthly safety meetings to discuss incidents and training opportunities.
• Trouble spots are highlighted, and foremen are required to return to the site to correct situations that are not in conformance. Employees have to sign off on problems that have not been resolved.
• In their inspections of houses and sites, company superintendents use pocket PCs so that they can upload their reports into the main data base. Foremen examine the reports, which help identify areas where additional training is needed.
• Customers are surveyed twice a year on the quality of materials and labor.

Modeled after the Malcolm Bladrige National Quality Award, the annual NHQ Awards are administered by the NAHB Research Center and Reed Residential Group, publisher of Professional Builder and Professional Remodeler magazines.

Entries are judged by panels of experts who evaluate the role that customer-focused quality plays in construction, business management, sales, design and warranty service.

Participants benefit from the insights they gain from the process of preparing an application for the award and from the feedback they receive from the judges.

“The application process gave us another way to benchmark our successes and shortcomings,” said Tourek.

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