Work record / Operating / Village San Juan / Questions answered
Village San Juan: questions answered
What people ask me about Village San Juan, and my answers. The project itself has its own page.
What shifted once the new operating model was running?
I cannot see their annual reports or financials, so I cannot quote the board's numbers. Our pricing rose a little. The biggest change was how we communicated with the board. We started a proactive daily log that the board could review. Calls and emails that had reached me at the corporate level several times a week fell to a few times a year, since the field work was documented daily and the board could see it. On communication, escalations all but disappeared.
What made the operating design strong enough for the board to keep a vendor it could easily have replaced?
A lower price was not it. Continuity was the one thing I could not honestly promise. So the second pitch offered something a board could vote for. Routine maintenance ran on a single queue with a calendar. A separate crew handled emergencies, sized to how fast a truck can physically get there. Severity windows were written down. A report landed on the board's desk on a schedule, not just when something went wrong. Each of those could go into the contract and be measured, so the board was voting on promises it could hold me to.
What did going from a flat retainer to a retainer with annual services fix?
Forecasting. Under the flat retainer, extras were billed as they came up. Once annual services sat beside the retainer, the board could see the year's work in advance, with its cost and its timing. We had enough history to price it cleanly, and it spared the board from deciding month by month.
What did moving the operation onto Buildertrend change?
Reporting, mostly. The board could log in and follow everything daily. The one mandatory thing was that our team on site report every day, and they did. After that, we hardly heard from the board.