Numbers ... but lots more.

It's always disturbed me to see managers and owners managing production solely by the numbers. Numbers are good, but they're only part of the story. If over-managed, they become junk. For example, companies report expected hours instead of hours actually spent on the job. Worse yet, crews have been known to leave jobs before their work was completely or satisfactorily done so that they hit the numbers.

This doesn't translate into efficiency. It leads to inefficiencies because it can increase callbacks and negatively affect your service quality. Then you've got to throw labor at the project to get caught up and save the client, who now doesn't have the same level of trust in your services.

They identify inefficiencies

Numbers help determine where to find opportunities for efficiency improvements. In maintenance, any new job should be closely monitored to match performance to the estimate. If there's a significant difference in hours to estimated hours, you know it's time to take corrective action to get the job on track. Or, the problem may be an estimating problem. The sooner you know that, the sooner you can correct the problem for future bids.

My experience has been that once a crew figures out how to do a job within the expected hours, the job stays on budget. It becomes a habit. The crew knows where to start, how to sequence through the job and how long it should take. It paces itself accordingly.

It requires a supervisor getting out in the field to watch the process and match it to the estimator's ...