Value
Engineering Comes To Apartments
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Roof and two columns with shutter painted without charge. |
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OGCC painted stucco wall
replacing wood gratis. |
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Air conditioners added
after initial paint job. Touch-up done without charge.
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You've got to be competitive every day of the year with old customers as well
as new ones. If you think you can count on repeat business just because you did
a great job the last time you painted that condominium association or
apartment project or bio-pharmaceutical campus, you are very naive. An increasing
number of new and old customers are demanding value engineering from all of their
past vendors, warm, fuzzy feelings not withstanding.
Value engineering means you must look at every avenue towards reducing cost
while maintaining the same quality of work. And this was true before the increase
in oil, concrete, steel and now paint. Can you find a paint that lasts longer,
that has better weathering characteristics, whose colors fade less, that has
a better spread capacity, that is less affected by highway detritus? Can you
find or train workpeople who can coat surfaces faster with brushes, rollers and
spray guns than the competition can? Can you find solutions to problems that
affect significant savings, such as designing a rolling scaffold as
opposed to a fixed one?
When United Dominion, a large apartment owner/developer, asked us to bid on
its 380 unit apartment project in Costa Mesa, our estimator, Brando Mendez, knew
that he would have to sharpen his pencil. And he did. He managed to secure the
multi-tenant painting services of Manuel Rodriguez, one of General Coatings'
best foremen. Then he went to his Frazee Paint and Wallcovering representative,
Brett Wells, and said, “If you want to get this big job, you need
to be very aggressive in pricing it.”
Before we began painting, United Dominion removed the front doors and the
window frames and glass and added a porch and a front overhang. After we began
painting, United decided to add shutters. Then they added air conditioning units.
After a while,
they wanted to add a “waist band” around the building. Finally, United
decided to remove a wood fence that was attached to the building on the
main street side and replace it with a new stucco wall.
Normally, you're looking at some serious change orders here. But not with
a creative estimator like Brando, who consulted with Manuel, and decided he had
enough hours estimated for 380 units so that he could cover all the modified
and additional surfaces without increasing the price. This kind of value engineering
takes a great deal of experience and some chutzpah.
The owner was impressed and rewarded General Coatings with three more apartment
projects in the Orange County market.
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Arthur
Raybold is VP of Marketing and Sales for General Coatings Painting, providing
painting, wallcovering and waterproofing services to multi-family, commercial
and industrial accounts in Southern California for 20 years. (800) 464-1277 • (858)
587-1277 ext. 306 • www.gencoat.com |
