To “take the higher ground” is to select a legal, moral, and ethical course of action. Most people know what is legally right or wrong. Where things get a little gray is when ethics comes in to play.
Many performance problems with field crews can be prevented. Will increasing the number of meetings your crews attend help reduce such problems? Maybe not, but, before you walk away, consider some of your own performance problems.
In a recent article on staff turnover in the construction industry, an interesting statistic on why staff level people leave their current firms to work for other construction firms moved us. It estimated that through August 1, 2001, contractors had experienced about 14.1% turnover among staff level people.
Having returned recently from the World of Concrete, we once again are amazed at the number of contractors who simply do not understand their production costs. Job costing is both critical and invaluable to any construction owner, superintendent, or supervisor. Proper job costing will have a profound impact on profitability, competitiveness, quality, longevity, and even employee morale. Designing the right costing process for your company can be challenging but not impossible.
Believe it or not, spring training for professional baseball is not far away. It seems like just yesterday that the Arizona Diamondbacks unseated the New York Yankees as World Champions. Wouldn't it be nice if we in the concrete industry could have our own "spring training"?
