The sale of every construction project relies on a combination of three factors: price, speed and quality. If the buyer wants the project done quickly, you either increase the price or lower the quality or do a combination of both. If the buyer wants the lowest possible price (a happenstance that is way too common in our industry), you lower the quality and slow the production process down.
Selling price and speed are simple. You just demonstrate the cost is lower than all the other estimates and promise to get the project done in a specified time. But how do you sell quality? How do you demonstrate that what you bring to the table is quality? It doesn’t matter if you’re a general contractor, wall fabricator, residential roofer or metal building assembler. No contractor can easily demonstrate the quality of his work. And buyers are always skeptical about such claims.
This is part of the reason we have codes; we have to ensure that there is a baseline of quality in every project to protect the safety of the inhabitants and the community. (Don’t underestimate the safety of the community in this calculation. I recently listened to a podcast on 99% Invisible- 99percentinvisible.org-called “Structural Integrity.” There was an engineering error in the construction of CitiCorp Center in New York City that was only discovered after the completion of the building in 1977. Because of the error, high winds could have toppled the 59-story building, destroying buildings for blocks around it. The rush to shore up the steel infrastructure and establish evacuation plans for the surrounding blocks makes a great, if harrowing, story.)
How do you sell quality, then? You have to do more than say, “we build to code,” because all that really means is if you built any worse, it would be illegal. That’s hardly a testament to quality. In the early 1990s, home improvement contractors faced as skeptical a group of buyers as anyone selling a product or service. Nobody trusted them, and they often ranked near used-car sales people in surveys on trust and reliability. The two major associations, the National Association of the Remodeling Industry and the National Home Builders Association Remodelers Council, established certification programs that allowed remodelers to prove to customers that they were professionals. The result is that now there are thousands of Certified Graduate Remodelers and Certified Remodelers, and homeowners can differentiate between the pros and the fly-by-night operators.
In addition, home improvement contractors as a whole have increased the sophistication of their business practices and are significantly better at creating companies that can survive for a long time. We now have far fewer businesses that race off the starting mark and disappear in a cloud of dust five years later.
With the new AC478 Accreditation program for metal building assemblers, we face a similar opportunity. In a way, AC478 is much more stringent than the certification programs that remodelers developed, but its aim is similar: establish a cadre of professionally managed businesses that will improve the overall quality of the industry; give assemblers a way to prove they build with safety and quality; and help business owners develop sustainable companies that benefit their families, employees and the community.
The Metal Building Contractors & Erectors Association
(MBCEA) established this program in conjunction with the Industry Accreditation Service (IAS). The hope for all parties is to get enough assemblers in the program so that architects and others will begin citing AC478 in their specifications. We’re not there yet, but Metal Construction News is behind this effort fully. This program only takes off if we sign up enough accredited assemblers, and the good news is that it will help your business. It’s a no brainer.
To learn more about AC478, join us for our webinar on June 2 at 1:30 p.m. Eastern time. Go to www.metalconstructionnews.com/events.aspx to register. If you can’t make the webinar, listen to it afterward on our YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/metalconstructionnew.com
