The Profit Builder Unscripted

job hand-off process that works

• Vicki Suiter • Episode 8

Share episode

Struggling with inconsistent project results? Greg Rehm from Liberty Hill Construction reveals the game-changing solution: an effective job hand-off process. In this must-listen podcast episode, Greg shares how focusing on job handoffs transformed his company, leading to:

  • Improved project consistency
  • Enhanced employee accountability
  • Increased productivity.

Discover the strategies that empowered Greg's team to take ownership of their work and deliver superior outcomes. Learn how to implement this powerful process in your own organization.

Plus, don't miss out on the FREE handoff process template Greg has shared with our listeners. Tune in now to revolutionize your project management and drive better results!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

  1. Pre-Sale - Trade Partner On-Site Agenda
  2. Post Sale Onsite Handoff
  3. Sales to Production Handoff
  4. Production On-Site Handoff Agenda 

Resources:

Connect with Vicki on social media:


If you love listening to this podcast, please leave a review in Apple Podcasts.


welcome back to the profit Builder unscripted I'm super excited you're here and today we're going to be talking about how do you invest in time and energy into training your team so that they can really be their best versions of themselves and be successful at actually taking ownership in their jobs all right let's jump in I'm super excited to have my guest Greg green here with Liberty Hill Construction today and we're going to be talking about how do you uh have a good job handoff process which is really critical to being able to have projects um go smoothly when you spend the time at the front end so first of all Greg thanks so much for being here and being a guest on the profit Builder you're welcome Vicki Greg and I just met recently as he responded to a request I put out there looking for someone who has expertise in the area of job handoff process specifically and I have to tell you that I'm going to let Greg introduce himself in a second but I so appreciated our initial conversation and hearing about his process and just really his process for running projects in general because he's very you you have a lot of great systems and processes and you're very organized in your approach and clearly it's made a big difference in terms of your ability to be consistently profitable on projects and have them run smoothly yeah um so before I um we have some questions that we've come up with that I'm going to ask you about this whole topic of job handoff process and what's your approach to it and um like that but before we jump into those questions would you just tell people a little bit about you and about your business and uh and then we'll jump in sure um so I'm the owner of Liberty Hill Construction we are a full service designed build Remodeling Company in Bedford New Hampshire um we celebrated our 22nd year in business and I was doing this on my own for six years prior to that and in the industry for several after college so I've got about 30 years in the construction industry and our team is built from myself alone to now we have nine full-time employees and use a lot of trade partners and Specialty contractors great we're in a small community and we're kind of a uh we we feel a nice niche for the community that we mainly work in nice that's great that's great well thank you so you know when we um you know youve you've been doing this for quite a while um you have a lot of experience of doing it on your own doing it with a team that completely different Dynamic right um and uh Greg I just like the first question I think that's good for us to tackle is why is it important to have a job handoff process and maybe we even just would be a good place to start by defining what does that mean to have a job process and why why do you see that it's important so I think um you know in our industry particularly most people start out as a sole proprietor um they wear every hat and they don't have any need to communicate information to themselves it's all stored in their head um but as you hire your first employee and start growing you suddenly discover that you have to extract the information in your head and pass it along to team members um and that's the birth of any handoff process is hey I can't be everywhere and every person on the team so need to create a system to uh transfer that information yeah and yeah that's the essence of the handoff process or the startup yeah you know you just touched on a couple of things that I think are really important that really have to do with how do you grow your business and one of them is you said when you shift from being the sole proprietor and it's all between your two years it's all in your head and now when you're growing and you hire people and you have to communicate more of that detail to other people that is such a I've seen that be such a challenging thing for a lot of contractors in their early stages of growth and um that that ability to be able to get what's what you know and all the information that you've gathered in and selling a job estimating a job to get it to the production team so that they can produce it at the same level you estimated it at really requires a a lot more intentional thinking and practices which is what you're talking about like developing the handoff process um comes out of that need and that ability to be able to get what's between our you know two ears as I say or it's in our head as you said you know down in a way that other people can understand and use it and know it what was the impetus for you I mean you had to go through this transition at some point right what was the impetus for you what was the thing that um you know I always say that the thing that causes us to create any change as human beings is usually there's something that that's not working there's you know there's something that some pain or some breakdown that's reoccurring or there's a highly desired State that's unfulfilled like those are the things that Inspire us or drive us to make change happen because change isn't necessarily easy what was the thing for you what was the what was the point at which you said man I got to figure out a different way that's a good question and um for me um I love change and I realized I I started learning trade in the field carpentry mostly and others but what I discovered was what I loved was the business side I and so I dug in as I moved through the years into processes and building a company that could repeat the things that it did and um deliver of our motto as a predictable and stress free experience so for me the the big impetus there was as much as I loved doing things in the field I loved building the business and working on the business to help other people be successful in other positions and the company as a whole became successful yeah that's awesome you know I I just I don't see that very often um I mean I think people have the desire contractors have the desire to grow their business and to have it become bigger and hire people and build great teams and deliver a quality experience and so many times people don't a lot of entrepreneurs don't have that muscle that they don't like they don't come to do it with like oh I love the systems the process side of it right they love the work part of it and they don't necessarily have that natural uh ability as it sounds like maybe you do and did to you know to create the the systems and the processes to let you do that um so I I really admire that you you know you you have that ability and you came with that ability and you know I'm sure that you've had to teach your team along the way to uh do this job handoff process right like at this point it's you know you created the system the structure and it's no longer um it's no longer you I'm assuming that does that all the time you had to teach your team that and they were people who were trades people right who love to do the work and now they had to learn how to teach somebody else to Embrace or understand the scope of work that they had intended to be done how did you like how do you do that like what's your process for because I'm just like I'm thinking you know there's people listening to this who are who think yes I really need to have a better handoff process or yes I want to grow my contracting business or yes I want to get my team to be better at communicating that and I'm going to ask you some more DET like we'll get into a little bit more detail in a second about what does that process look like but how did you like how did you start making that transition what was the you know what was yeah what did that look like another good question so a couple things one it's SL it's kind of slow right you pick one thing at a time it usually starts in the production phase but I think one important note is it requires a level of Letting Go as the owner um you're you're working by yourself you're in complete control of everything and as soon as you introduce new people and you start letting go you're going to see things done not the way you would have done them and um that that's a hard phase in the transition as a business grows is that owner letting go and realizing you know it's the end result how we get there maybe isn't as important as as important as I thought it was and so you start to let go which allows your team to start finding their way and and that that's I think that part is what trips up many businesses from growth is they can't relinquish that control of how it gets done exactly um just like even a great process has to be continually in a state of change and revision and development as you add new people and things change it has to evolve as well yeah you know um as I'm listening to you because I the I totally agree that that whole thing of letting go of control and the fear of somebody's going to do it the way that I do it and they are going to do it differently and there's also this element though right of if I let go of control will they do it at all and um it's what I call the difference between abdicating and delegating right if I just abdicate it and go it's your job to do the job handoff process and they don't have a structure or a system in place to do that and there's no accountability back to you then you've just like you've kind of lobbed it over there which I think is sometimes what is challenging about when we start to hire people is if we don't have a structure around how to manage it for results and actually delegate a result as opposed to kind of lob it over there and just abdicate it and go well now it's yours you go do it and then we get disappointed if they don't do it and right I mean you absolutely yeah um so so some of the things we did was um we probably had too many meetings right um field staff hates to be in meetings but you need everyone in your company to kind of walk through how do we want to do this you want input from everyone so there's buyin as you launch this new process if it just comes from yourself and it's like all right this is what I want everyone to do generally doesn't seem as successful as if they work to build that process together uh we actually hired consultants and different professionals through the years to develop Sops you know standard operating procedures and we did it from we did it from the phone ringing all the way through to completion of warranty and and it it took years and over those years employees came in and last um so you were always changing and of course as you grew and your projects changed and your focuses changed the process had to be adapted too but a lot of the core remain the same so there's two key distinctions I hear you talking about one is be clear about what your process is like when you know what your process is and it's documented right so that it's repeatable that it's not in everybody's head so clear about your process and the second thing is getting Buy in an agreement which is absolutely I love that like it's the best way especially as you're implementing something like this right it's the best way to actually get people's Buy in is when they have an agreement in it they have some input they you know they become it becomes a collaborative process with them as opposed to hey here's a thing on this pie piece of paper because when that like when we don't do it the first way we when we AR aren't clear about what is the process and we're not getting by in an agreement with our teams what ends up happening is it becomes sort of the flavor of the week change that we want to make and so people will test you and they'll find out are you serious about wanting to do this yeah and another component of that is you have to follow your own process yes yes so the idea that um you're going to expect everyone else to do this but well you're you're going to do your own thing you know you have to follow your own process yes or people won't buy into the validity of yeah and I think one of the easiest and best ways to do that and I'm going to ask you to actually talk about what your what your handoff process looks like here in just a second but like so it's being clear about what your process is but then also setting up the structure for managing it which is the accountability the meetings like having there be a a natural structure where you can follow up right and I know you talk about this um you talked about this when we first chatted and then you've sent me some great information too about like your meeting agendas that have specifically what are we talking about so that all the way down to how you manage any process in your business in this case the handoff process has a structure for how you're managing it which I love because it now moves it out of is another step of moving it out of your head of I know what I need to have done and now every meeting I show up having to explain that where instead you've created a structure in your business whereby there's an agenda there's an outline here's how we do this meeting here's how we do that meeting so that's awesome so would you just talk about can you just dive into what is your handoff process sort of what does that look like at the different stages sure and so just for clarification when we talk about handoff process I'm focusing on the handoff from sales to production yes so um for us um we have a business develop manager he is working with our designer and he is working with the customer and he is is putting the job details together he successfully sells a project and then it's time to start transferring that information that's where our handoff process pretty much starts our our first meeting which is typically within a week of a sale it's called the post sale handoff and that's his chance[Music] to transfer the information that he's gathered along the design agre ment phasee and put it in the lap of the production manager the selections coordinator who in my company is also the bookkeeper and myself and he delivers all the project scope details the estimate um notes or changes that may have happened at the presentation the sales presentation and basically sets a stage for um this is what we sold and agreed to this this is the feedback we got at the meeting these are the things we discussed they asked about this or that or start dates and attempts to like regurgitate all of that information as much as possible so that it can start switching into the production phase you now can I ask you a question about that like sure um so it's great so it sounds like you have all the right people there and you're really being very thorough about what's included what's not included what what what had us come to certain conclusions or decisions excuse me um how where do you keep that information because I would imagine it's not somebody just sitting in a meeting regurgitating it like how do you guys because there's a there's got to be some way to capture that all along the way so that it can be communicated it can be looked at reviewed like how do you do how does that person who's doing that handoff how do they do that all right so so we'll back up a little prior to the post sale handoff so what we use as a definition of scope we call the project details it's a lengthy very descriptive section by section trade by trade from permitting and planning to deconstruction excavation Foundation every category laid out in order that the job goes and it lists very specifically all the things we're doing or not doing what might be an allowance what might be an option not included in the contract but has been figured out and it walks through every detail of the job it's for us it's almost like our Bible in terms of what we've agreed to do now it turns out that um there's three of us that review that prior to sale the production manager myself you know what I'm going to ask you to pause just for one I think I've permanently fixed that issue thanks so um maybe if you could just start again at um from the per process sure so uh well and the question was where do we store this information right so we develop a very detailed written scope of work that defines all the things that we're going to do in this job from permitting and planning to deconstruction and all through all of the trades and we Define all our allowances or options the information eventually will be put on our project management software um so which every employee has a log in and access to so um the project manager the business develop manager and myself all review the project details or scope of work and the estimate and the plans prior to sale and then what's the uh um is that like who manages keeping that up to dat and how does like are like things assigned to people or like how does that yeah so good question so um and and honestly there's some pain there in terms of like whose job is it to continue to store that information update that information replace existing information as it moves from the design agreement all the way through to warranty and the challenges that responsibly shifts along the way it moves from one person to the next now you could if you read the details of all those agendas you'd see notes around doing things uh putting things into Builder Trend and you know that's something that is constantly changing or re-evaluating just based on the roles of different individuals in the company and you know last year a part-time employee became a full-time employee is now one of her positions is sales assistant and she's taking on a greater and greater role each each quarter with regard to managing some of our systems and helping update and being a support um person to the business development manager so even though there's a process and it's written well now you enter a new person and it divides a particular role or you know job description and so we're talking about the handoff process I could talk for two more days about all the other processes that are intertwined within the handoff process whether it's descriptions or PTO policies or anything yeah yeah um I think you and I could have a lot of fun in this on those topics uh near and dear to my heart well so so you've captured all of this information um and you what's included what's excluded scope selections what you know what you don't know so you've captured all that it's in a it's you keep it in Builder trend is that where you're that's correct we keep it in all information is in Builder Trend you sit down and you have that initial meeting with um you said that you the prod uh project manager the person doing selections and and this the sales assistant and the selections coordinator is also the bookkeeper so she's entering the financials and um and it's not the project manager at that step it's actually what we call the production manager or production coordinator okay who at that meeting will also determine a potential start date and um who the project manager will be okay and that that will set up for the next phase of the handoff which is essentially bringing that information to the project manager okay so what's the intent of that first meeting if you were to just give a quick what's the intent of that first meeting because that's important right like if some's listening and they're like all right what like what's my goal what's my intent there what's the intent to me the intent the ultimate goal is that that salesperson business develop manager project developer whatever you want to call that position is done they are on to working on the next sales and they have unloaded and communicated all the information that they've gleaned over the entire design budgeting and planning phase and they've landed it in the production lap and now they can all run with it with very little need to go back and ask them questions not that that doesn't happen but my goal is that that person is is done with that project they've done everything that they're required to do they and now production can run with it and they can work on the next sale cor so and that's you call that a sales associate H yeah that's an assistant to the salesperson or business development manager so are they the person who's who are estimating the project so in in our in our business structure the business develop manager is the salesperson and estimator okay and writes the project scope okay all right so they're the one doing the handoff at that point and they've done the scope and they've done the estimate and they've sold the job correct great Okay cool so that's the first meeting yep kind of does that that big chunk handoff and then tell me what happens next because I know you have a few other the next meeting is one that I'm not generally at it's what we call it's the project manager handoff which is what we determined was that meeting I just talked about the post trying to get a project manager in on that that has not doesn't know anything about the project wasn't successful that was a a failure on our attempt at oh well why not just have them there too instead of having another meeting oh we determined that that wasn't going to work um Why didn't it work it didn't work because everyone in that meeting other than the project manager already knew a lot about the job they had reviewed the estimate the plans the project details prior to sale project manager had no involvement virtually none so they had to be brought up to speed where all of us already were so it it didn't make sense to have them sit there and we'd have to bring them up to speed where that meeting typically lasts less than a half an hour and we were spending an hour just bringing someone up to speed so really important distinction right because I'm just listening from the perspective of it's somebody if it's like a smaller firm they don't have quite that many people it would be maybe directly to the project manager if it was from an estimator or from the sales team to the project person if there had not been sort of this other layer that it had this you know this greater degree of involvement so that makes total sense yeah yeah your point is particularly important to listeners because this is what works best for our company the size and the number of people I had a company that only had three employees so we would have all been there there'd just be me and the project manager and of course that would be the handoff right as we've grown with different levels and responsibilities that's why your process is in constant change really um and that was just an example of us discovering that it didn't make sense to have the project manager there even though all the information needed to get transferred to them it just wasn't the right time yeah so we created the next meeting which was the project manager handoff which only happens with the production manager the selections coordinator and the project manager and that's where they start downloading the pro the production manager will introduce the project manager to the homeowner at that point and re really we're trying to get the project manager to start taking over the job at that point but the schedule's still being developed by the production manager um selections or whatnot are being input by the selections coordinator so it's a slower transition um but they're now getting up to speed with hey in about six weeks you're going to be starting a new project you've got some time to learn about it meet the customer re view things yeah I have to tell you that it's interesting as I'm listening to you I'm think uh I'm thinking wow that's like that's taking the time at the front end of a project to really flush out all the details that's really what you're talking about here um and get the job set up so that it's ultimately going to run better at the back end and I'm going to ask you to talk a little bit about that when you're finished talking about your process but I just want to kind of put a pin here because I I think that sometimes people think oh gosh that's like so much time or like my jobs have to start right away because we think they have to start right away but the truth is goes back to what you were talking about earlier is know your process have a process know your process execute your process and um by having more of a of a system and more of a process that the front end for being really clear and flushing out all those details right makes a project run more smoothly be more on time there's fewer change orders there's happier clients I me there's so many benefits again I'm gonna ask you about that but I just wanted to point that out because as I'm listening to you that and this has been true this whole conversation with you um Greg is I really appreciate that um spending the time investing the time at the front end saves you time at the back end and makes jobs one so much more smoothly and I've seen it time and again with contractors anyway go ahead so go ahead I'll try not to divert too far from the next agenda in the process but we average at least two to three times greater amount of time in the planning process than the production process and it is an easy qualifier for us when someone calls and says I want to start in four or six weeks that is an immediate no for us there's there's no scenario where we're going to jeopardize the value of that planning process just to start sooner because it's going to cost everyone in the end um so back also distinguishes you from other contractors who just want to be a yes right now and those just those jobs end up getting derailed at the back end they just absolutely missed expectations always yeah all right go ahead sorry back to the process so now the project manager um has been downloaded on the project and they're starting to um reconnect with the trade Partners selections are happening we're starting to get the customer out to our vendors um and suppliers making decisions confirming schedules and and then the usually about four to six weeks after that project manager gets their hands on it we have a the last in office handoff we call it the sales to production handoff and essentially this is this is where we're still small enough and this is probably in the next several years a a meeting that may get removed changed adapted um the entire company comes together together from labor to owner and um we do a handoff with everyone and we go around the table we review all the project details ask questions um salesperson will again kind of talk about what types of customer they are do they have pets children little personal things that everyone might want to be aware of um you know uh they're they have twoy olds they nap during the day they asked if they could not have any work going on in the middle of the day um they're really concerned about their lawn it could be anything but that is a really a company wide handoff and that is the end of basically anyone other than the production team being involved in the project much other than questions or clarifications um and they have a onsite portion of that and then they leave the office just the production team and they go on site everyone then gets to meet the homeowner you'll see the agenda they might review dumpster placement portapotty special requests for job site signs or Material locations they'll understand here's a good one what are they going to need the first day of the job right instead of arriving at the job to find out what you need and then going back and getting it like what are you gonna need dust protection you know floor protection all of the things that would be nicer to know if you're out there figure that out while you're out there yeah yeah nice nice tell me um so I so so I so appreciate your um your thoroughness and all of that and um and what it you know one of the things I always say is information is is so powerful in helping us have greater Clarity so that we have more confidence so that we can take more powerful actions and when I think about like the time and energy and effort that you put in making sure that your team has that Clarity so that they have more conf idence to be able to like hit the ground running and be successful that they're not kind of like dragging and figuring it out and making mistakes and you know bumping along and figuring it out while they're on the job that it's not to say that it's they're going to remember everything or it's always perfect no doubt but you what you've done is you've stacked the odds in their favor of everybody being happier and more and more successful including the homeowner right um can you talk a bit about like so um I I know you're a systems process thinker and you're and it sounds like you're a really great Problem Solver when you started this process though and I would imagine that you haven't always been this organized and this detailed in what you do can you just speak to the difference of when you didn't have a handoff process that was as thorough or just a handoff process period versus having a handoff process what was the difference in how your projects ran a great great question um so the big difference the biggest difference I'd say is the experience from the customer side I mean our customers just love our process it's so predictable communication is so regular um and we don't get surprises our budgets are accurate our schedules are accurate it's it literally is as close as you can get to stressfree for an invasive you know an invasive project of ripping out a kitchen in the in the heart of your home um but before that your your spinning plates as they say you're bouncing around people are getting a different experience based on how busy you are that day or you're just you're putting more fires out we don't have fires anymore we um customers have less stress within their lives just because we can anticipate their need needs and anticipate those times in a project that are more stressful um you know whether it's within within our process the change order process the schedule process the weekly updates from the project manager all these little things I mean we have processes and then within all those we have little additional processes so now with over 20 years experience we've weeded out a lot of those problems so back to your question like what kind of pain did you experience well pain of like getting called out of hours um people not knowing what was going on suddenly having to work on the weekend for because you didn't plan well a lot of the pain is experienced from the employees and staff of the company um because of the lack of planning um because you're trying to make up up for things that you didn't do my team I mean my project managers haven't worked a single Saturday or Sunday in a decade like we work Monday through Friday yeah um we don't even we have a policy of about getting extra PTO if you get called on the weekend I enacted it about three years ago it hasn't been used yet that's great that's great you know um it's it's interesting as I'm listening to you because I I the most direct way to be able to grow your business is to be a is you have to grow your team you have to have more people who are wearing those hats so that you're not wearing all of them and part of what you've been talking about today is the whole thing of having processes that are repeatable that other people can be successful at executing when there's consistency when it's documented when there's accountability for it when there's you know buying an agreement right all those things and that um the best way to build a really great team around you who actually can take ownership who can be successful is to be consistent right that consistency have a process know what your process is execute it consistently um so uh yeah I so appreciate this conversation I think you've touched on so many things that are important in terms of growing a construction business and helping contractors find their next level of success and to build great teams around them because fundamentally you know while we're talking about a change order process what we're really talking about is how do you think of your business from the perspective of being able to scale it at all build great teams create great experiences have amazing referrals I mean it hits on so many different things just doing like even just this one simple thing can be such a huge difference that makes the difference in um building a successful contracting business so thank you I so appreciate your input now I know that you have a couple things that you've shared with me that I will share with everybody watching and listening uh you've given me some agendas for each of those meetings and You' given me some job handoff checklists um that I will definitely be sharing here and before we wrap up I guess my last question is is there anything else that you would like to share with everybody that I haven't actually we haven't touched on or haven't asked well one thing that kind of is a benefit or result of um a well documented process you know commitment is it allows you the owner to continue to step back from your business and um you know maybe 12 years ago I took one of the many courses from someone who said if you don't leave your business for at least two weeks um people will just delay decision making until you get back so I said all right I'm taking a two- week vacation this year and I'm doing it and well that was 12 years ago and I've taken at least one two week every year last week I was away from my business last year almost 10 weeks um and that's without checking in no email no you know no phone calls are very limited I should say and that's another great benefit of processes that your team can execute and it allows you to step back have family time have personal time and allow your business to continue to thrive without you for many that's a goal of absolutely AG in their business and a great benefit of doing this yeah that's why we start businesses in the first place right like to be able to make as much money as we want to make and have the option to choose how we spend our time and to love what we do and somewhere along the line that gets derailed and part of what you're talking about is when you have consistent processes when you do things consistently when you build great teams you have the ability to be away away from your business for 10 weeks congratulations that's awesome has it have you also found that you're more profitable now than you were before um yes I would say that I think at least in my experience as you grow you get more accurate with your recordkeeping job costing and so you actually can feel more confident of your actual profitability where some some may think they're more or less profitable but some early on generally people aren't taking as good of recordkeeping so they actually don't know so again get into the financial process H how do we job cost what's our system for that you know I mean this can be done in in marketing in HR in in your financials it's there's no lack of things to write a process about um but in the beginning it's probably most about this handoff uh changing it from yours to your one employees you know responsibility nice yeah we're consistent we and we know our numbers and we know them ahead of time and um and we have a lot of history now so it's very predictable for us too nice nice so be clear have good feedback be consistent yeah and flexible yes always flexible Greg thank you I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your experience and thank you so much for your generosity of sharing your your temp and your checklists and agendas and um very generous of you and thank you I've so enjoyed this conversation and I'm so grateful for you to um have shared with everybody listening and watching today my pleasure Vicky and I have no problem if you share my information if anyone wanted to follow up with questions or whatnot be happy to spend more time oh thank you you want to give them your email address here sure uh my email is Greg G at LHC nh.com as in Liberty Hill Construction new hampshire.com awesome thank you thanks I hope you found the interview with Greg to be helpful I am so excited to be sharing all the great resources that he has provided and they're all Below in the show notes and if you have a story of great learning that you've had in your life as a as a human being as a leader as a manager I invite you to please let me know I would love to interview you I think that our um Collective ability to be able to share our stories and share our experience lets us all know that we're not alone on the journey and that we as human beings all struggle at different times and and it's out of those struggles and out of those breakdowns that we face that often times come some of our greatest gifts our greatest learning our greatest tools like with Greg so um if you have you know it and you know if you've never done this before it's okay and if you don't feel comfortable talking in public it's okay it's just you and me having a conversation um I would love to hear from you reach out to me at Vicky atorus builders.com and I'll see you next time on the profit Builder unscripted

People on this episode

Head Shot

Vicki Suiter

Host