March 2022
As you may have heard from your COO, noticed on the Vision Board in the office somewhere, or read in the Newsletter, one of our annual initiatives is to increase our overall gross margin. This means what? Well, the short version is it means we need to find ways to be a little more profitable in all that we do. One example would be to find ways to bring in projects more efficiently. This is not to say that we are all doing a bad job and we need to do better, it is to say let’s take a look at what we are doing and look at what things from the past can be updated or streamlined to make our jobs easier and more efficient. Another example of this is every time you see a change come from the SPC team, or from Trey or Ramona, that is most likely because we have found a way to do things better and easier to fit our needs as we grow.
We are currently looking in two departments in Operations, Estimating, and Project Management. We are asking the departments to look at current processes that could use some changes due to these processes were put into place to fit a need that is no longer needed or maybe someone has found a better way that can save time. We always want to be careful when making a decision like changing a process, because you don’t know how many things this change might affect. That said, we bring in as many minds as possible to carefully evaluate each process to ensure we can keep our promise to our customers and to our partners if we do make a change.
In Estimating, we are asking them to come up with our best practices to align all regions at a base level for installations. One decision made was to reduce j-hooks quoted by 25%. This change was to address the overages we were seeing across the regions. This is a good start. This is something that can have a big impact when we are bidding a huge project and a project where we know the competition is tight. Working with Estimating in this way also helps to get us closer towards our One Lone Star, 3-5 year Key Thrust.
I would like to take this opportunity to ask all of you Lone Star All Stars for your suggestions on how WE can get better or improve on an existing process. I would also like to add that anytime we can be more profitable can only add to profit sharing. We value any ideas that you have as you are the experts at what you do, and we cannot do it without you, my fellow Lone Stars.
In closing, I want to give a shout out to everyone for all their hard work as we navigate through these difficult times like supply chain issues, COVID, manpower shortages, and everything else we are currently dealing with. We are going to get busier and busier as projects are rolling in, and we will have to remain agile to get through this crunch. Thank you for all you do. We will get through this together and be better for it.
One Team, One Purpose, One Family
- Victor Gonzalez, Chief Operating Officer, Central Texas
Comments