Finishing two weeks late and 17% over budget is, for many construction companies, a perfectly normal outcome. But for Mashburn, it is a D-minus effort. In fact, the company owes its founding to challenging that norm during the industry's desperate crisis of the 190s when the competitive-bidding process, which had originated with public works projects, spilled over into the private sector--and drove a wedge between builders and clients, according to Harry Mashburn. Some builders frantic for business fueled bidding ward; average margins shrank to less than 3%. It wasn't unheard of for winning bidders to sign contracts that included no margin at all. They figured they would earn money through change orders -- expansions or modifications that allowed builders to impose additional fees. To this day that's the world of construction.
Harry Mashburn looked at this state of affairs and decided to build a company from a different blueprint. Construction, he reasoned, is a team sport. If you want to build things fast, you've got to build teams first. So Mashburn uses in-house facilitators to align interests of a project's constituencies -- architects, contractors, sub-contractors, clients -- before it pours the first drop of concrete. At the outset of each project, it works with clients and designers to define their goals, to agree on a schedule, to establish metrics of success -- even to write a mission statement. As the project moves forward, suppliers, vendors, and subcontractors join this team building process.
(In)House Construction
"People are the critical factor today," Mashburn says. "If you have really smart, talented people with above-average skills, you're going to win. But how can you build a training and education effort that will bring them in and keep them?
Mashburn's answer to this question? Hours of training. The company also produces its own best practices courses in fields such as billing, pricing and project planning.
Carolinas AGC, which presented Mashburn with the Best General Contractor "Pinnacle" award at its annual convention in January, 2002, cited Mashburn's dedication to training and positive working relationship with subcontractors along with its company character, for below average workers' compensation and claims rate and for its many safety awards.
Still, Mashburn's real work -- and most of its brain power -- is not at its headquarters. It's onsite, where the buildings going up in areas like the Midlands, Charleston, Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. If knowledge never gets to the jobsite, then it can't be of much value says Lee Mashburn. That is why every new hire gets a state-of-the-art laptop.
"We've embraced the world of computers," says Jane C. Andrews, vice president of administration. "Every workstation, every desk is connected to the Internet and we take computers onsite. We use knowledge sharing technology internally as well as externally. For instance, we recently finished a plant here for a company in Germany and took job photos and scanned them into the website so the owners back in Germany could look at the process photos on a weekly basis. They were grateful they could monitor the process."
Integrated Services
Those at Mashburn Construction have also vowed to grow in yet another way: a way that is different than the industries norm.
To ensure technical proficiency and intellectual dexterity, Paul Mashburn developed a new division last year known as Integrated Services.
Director of Integrated Services, Paul Mashburn is applying the ideas and practices of the new economy to a business as old as the pharaohs.
Ensuring the company finishes complex projects on time and on budget, this Clemson graduate manages Mashburn's newly created division. "My evolution with the company has been interesting," says Paul. I started digging ditches and cutting grass for the company when I was about 13 years old. Now I am director of this new division. I enjoy watching a project come to fruition; watching an idea come to life and then handing the keys over to the new owner upon completion.
A 1991 graduate of Clemson University with a degree in Building Science, Paul has been with Mashburn since 1991. Overseeing three estimators and two project managers, Paul Mashburn handles the operations of the new division which entails extensive preconstruction services.
"It's really a different approach to construction," he explains. "Instead of an owner having an idea for a building and then getting an architect to draw it up and a bunch of contractors to price it, we meet with the owner early on and get a feel for the owner's budget and then help design a building to meet his or her budget. That way, by then end of the design process, the client has a guaranteed budget."