There are builders throughout the country that set themselves apart through their green building strategies and others that gain notoriety for their quality management and customer focus. Here we will discuss briefly how one New England builder combines these tactics very successfully.
Incorporating quality management into his design-build firm is as natural as gravity to John Abrams of South Mountain Company, Inc., Chilmark, Mass. "I can't imagine building any other way." There are two driving principles that keep South Mountain on the cutting edge of quality—employee involvement and customer satisfaction.
A key to this quality mindset is making many of the employees owners of the company. Once hired, employees basically don't leave, according to Abrams. After five years employees can buy part of the ownership of the company. Many of the employees have been with South Mountain for 15 to 20 years, he said. In 1987 Abrams sold the company, which he had formed in 1976, to himself and two long-term employees and re-organized South Mountain as an employee-owned company. There are now 11 employee owners and another 10 employees who are working toward ownership.
A constant desire to build the best possible house is engrained in each of the people working for South Mountain. "If we do a lousy job on a house, we know we will be back to fix whatever is wrong. We stick with a house." A year after a house is built South Mountain employees conduct what Abrams called a "lengthy walkthrough" and fix anything at no additional charge. "Houses need post-occupancy care," according to Abrams. "They don't automatically work right. Post-occupancy is like childhood. Nurturing is required."
Even if a product like a cabinet door does not work after five or 10 years, South Mountain will fix it for no charge. The company, which usually builds five to 10 houses a year, builds most of its own cabinets, which Abrams said should last virtually forever. But he said the fix-it policy also applies to any manufactured cabinets used by the company.
Abrams said about 25 percent of the company's business comes from repeat business—doing alternations or additions to houses South Mountain had built previously. He noted that going back to a house provides useful feedback on how the house is working as a system, thereby increasing the company's capacity for customer satisfaction.
Energy efficiency is one of the important factors in a quality-built house for the employee owners of the company who strive for other types of resource conservation as well. For example, the company's first choice for all exposed interior and exterior woodwork is salvaged wood. "For character, quality, and low environmental impact it can't be beat," according to Abrams. "But salvaged wood is a complex and subtle resource. It can't be shoehorned into any design. It's hard to specify and hard to find the right material for the right job. If used inappropriately, it loses its value and becomes expensive and wasteful."
Abrams feels his company does a pretty good job on resource conservation compared to other home builders, but admits, "Ultimately we are babes in the woods. It will take another quarter of a century to keep getting better with resources."
The company's principles of a successful design process have built a solid foundation for the future in terms of both environmental consciousness and customer satisfaction. These principles include:
- Respect the elements that already work well in our quest for new solutions. Abrams believes the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
- Strive for balance, not compromise.
- When in doubt remember that nature is our client too.
- Remember that it takes a well-integrated team to make a good building. Develop relationships that go from project to project, so teams need only be adjusted, not rebuilt.
- Find the right clients and build collaborative relationships.
- Use previous projects as living design laboratories.