Construction remote location efficiency =/

Azlana · Post by **Azlana** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:25 pm

So we own a construction company with about 10 employees and have between 3-5 locations going at any given time. The problem is we don't have a way to regulate where people are and at what time. I wanted to buy time card punchers to keep at each location - but they are almost $500 a piece! - I thought we could have a beeper on each location that they could two-way beep to our office manager when they got on site...but that's not cheap to have either. Does anyone have any reccomendations about how to become efficient and not let employees fix their hours so that they very conveniently get exactly 40 a week? Thanks.

Drem · Post by **Drem** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 10:39 pm

Seems impossible to do that without having a supervisor and a time clock or trustworthy employees with their own log books. Sounds like you don't have the latter, so I'd get time clocks...

KILL · Post by **KILL** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:16 pm

pay a piece rate rather than by the hour

Dylan · Post by **Dylan** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 11:17 pm

Sell naked pictures of yourself on the internet.

Oh wait, we already got them for free.

Drem · Post by **Drem** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:11 am

KILL wrote:pay a piece rate rather than by the hour

Piece rate pay is for farming. It's supposed to encourage more earnings over less time because of added work incentive. To make a successful piece rate pay system, the employer needs to be thinking along the lines of "The more the employee earns, the better off the employer is." They should be thinking about how much it costs to do a job, not how much it costs to pay their employees. Otherwise it will fail

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:30 am

You are going about this all wrong Azlana...

You need should pay average hourly rates, but provide good monetary incentives for getting the jobs done as fast as possible. That would encourage your people to work hard and be efficient.

I would assign people to be at a certain place at a certain time and follow up with them regularly. I recommend some sort of business plan to provide them with Nextel/2-way enabled phones. Then test them by saying "hey are you at the site? Yes, good put the customer on the phone".

If you catch them lying give them one warning and fire their asses if caught again.

You could get a business cell phone plan if you negotiate well for probably as cheap as 40 bucks a person and say 500 minutes a month...Just make sure the plan and phones have the 2-way feature. I think cingular offers this now.

Jay · Post by **Jay** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:25 am

Dylan wrote:Sell naked pictures of yourself on the internet.

Oh wait, we already got them for free.

WHERE THE FUCK WAS I FOR THIS?!

KILL · Post by **KILL** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 9:11 am

Drem wrote:
KILL wrote:pay a piece rate rather than by the hour

Piece rate pay is for farming. It's supposed to encourage more earnings over less time because of added work incentive. To make a successful piece rate pay system, the employer needs to be thinking along the lines of "The more the employee earns, the better off the employer is." They should be thinking about how much it costs to do a job, not how much it costs to pay their employees. Otherwise it will fail

Huh? what are you on about?

Piece rates are not just for farming. I dont know where the hell you got that - maybe the idea originated in farming - whatever. It works well and is widely used in construction, benefiting both employer and employee.

The way it works will vary quite a bit depending on the type of work done, but the idea is still the same - pay for work done as opposed to hours clocked - same as salesmen.

Minrott · Post by **Minrott** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 9:25 am

So time card units are $500? It's not like it's coming out of your pocket. Write them off and they'll pay for themselves.

Narrock · Post by **Narrock** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 9:58 am

KILL wrote:
Drem wrote:
KILL wrote:pay a piece rate rather than by the hour

Piece rate pay is for farming. It's supposed to encourage more earnings over less time because of added work incentive. To make a successful piece rate pay system, the employer needs to be thinking along the lines of "The more the employee earns, the better off the employer is." They should be thinking about how much it costs to do a job, not how much it costs to pay their employees. Otherwise it will fail

Huh? what are you on about?

Piece rates are not just for farming. I dont know where the hell you got that - maybe the idea originated in farming - whatever. It works well and is widely used in construction, benefiting both employer and employee.

The way it works will vary quite a bit depending on the type of work done, but the idea is still the same - pay for work done as opposed to hours clocked - same as salesmen.

It was probably a typo. I think he meant "framing" in which case he is correct. I did piece work too. It SUCKED because they set the bar too high for you to make really good money. It was ownage for the owners though.

I would also recommend this system if you want to keep your payroll down and production high.

KILL · Post by **KILL** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:25 am

framing, farming, dosent matter.

piece rates arent any different than hourly, in the sense that the rates are determined by the local economy and the employer. if you are in a field that is flooded with skilled workers, you'll probably find that the rate isnt all that great.

i am in the aluminum construction industry in FL. thanks to several hurricanes over the past 2 years there is an incedibly high demand for skill. piece rate installers who know wtf they are doing are making well over 100k right now. i would not be one bit surprised if some crack 200k this year.

prior to the hurricanes, a good installer might have made 50-60k.

if your employer has people lined up outside looking for work, your pay will probably suck, hourly or piece.

The Kizzy · Post by **The Kizzy** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:33 am

My ex husband worked at Lincoln Electric (they make welders) and he was paid a peice rate. My brother used to work at a rope factory, and he was also paid peice rate.

Azlana · Post by **Azlana** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:48 pm

Hasselhoff wrote:Yes, good put the customer on the phone".

This would be awesome the problem is that the homes we are working on are mostly for an investor, so the homes are vacant.

Minrott - you're right about it being a tax write-off and that it would eventually pay for itself, and ultimately I think this is what we're going to have to do, it's just that it isn't $500, it's $500x5, but yeah, it will be okay I guess. I'm just incredulous that you can buy a cell phone w/ internet capabilities, a camcorder, and all the works for $40, but to get a 15lb machine from the 1960's who's ONLY purpose is to print out the time and date on a piece of paper costs $500...seems to me to be about as complex as a thermometer, and I can't believe there is no hand held, cheapy time puncher somewhere out there. :dunno:

The Kizzy · Post by **The Kizzy** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 2:53 pm

Cant you buy computers for the offices and they have to log on to a system to start their pay?

Azlana · Post by **Azlana** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 3:06 pm

I don't think I'm explaining this well...

There is just the owner, the office manager - she works out of an office in a suburb, but we work all over the greater Portland area. Most of the laborers have minimal specialized skills and there is only one foreman. So pretty much the only people who can show people how to do skilled work (ie tile work, cabinetry, framing etc) are the two of them, so we generally get people started on other stuff....like, pulling up linoleum, or demo work, and then let them go to it while the skilled people run off to other locations to do whatever needs to be done. For awhile we had people calling into the office manager and stating their location and the times they got there, but there's no way to tell if they are *actually* there or not, or if they are calling as they are driving to, or away from the home. That's why I thought it would be good to have a bunch of time punchers and just have one in each house, but whoa, kinda spendy.

If I had it my way we would just subcontract everything, put a 30% markup on all of it and be millionaires in a year, but my husband loves to work, and for pretty much free at that.

Phlegm · Post by **Phlegm** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 4:01 pm

The time card solution may not work if there are no supervision. They could just punch each other in/out and you wouldn't know about it.

Minrott · Post by **Minrott** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 5:34 pm

Yeah, I read that the first time. $2500 is a large investment for a small business. But ask yourself it that's worth the cost of having to have a 'foreman' in place on every job site? Someone you can trust to keep accurate records, and trust doesn't come for $8 an hour.

When I worked construction, we all showed up at the lumber yard(part of the business) at 6:45am, and went to job sites right from their. We worked till 5pm, and the foremans kept track of time. They knew we were starting work at 7am, but the only way they knew we were there till 5pm is because the foremans went back to the yard every day.

Time cards are cheaper, and we were pretty honest anyway. Then there's what Phlegm said.

When it comes down to it, low skill menial labor jobs that pay low wages are bound to attract workers that don't really want to work. Yes, you'll have some good honest ones, but those are the ones who are going to learn a skill and move on. Without direct supervision, you'll never know for sure if you're being screwed.

Dylan · Post by **Dylan** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:28 pm

Hire Mexicans, they'll work all day and have their children come work for free too.

Tae-Bo · Post by **Tae-Bo** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 12:54 am

we put gps units in our trucks but that doesnt sound like it would really help you guys at all

Captain Insano · Post by **Captain Insano** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 5:52 pm

Azlana wrote:I don't think I'm explaining this well...

There is just the owner, the office manager - she works out of an office in a suburb, but we work all over the greater Portland area. Most of the laborers have minimal specialized skills and there is only one foreman. So pretty much the only people who can show people how to do skilled work (ie tile work, cabinetry, framing etc) are the two of them, so we generally get people started on other stuff....like, pulling up linoleum, or demo work, and then let them go to it while the skilled people run off to other locations to do whatever needs to be done. For awhile we had people calling into the office manager and stating their location and the times they got there, but there's no way to tell if they are *actually* there or not, or if they are calling as they are driving to, or away from the home. That's why I thought it would be good to have a bunch of time punchers and just have one in each house, but whoa, kinda spendy.

If I had it my way we would just subcontract everything, put a 30% markup on all of it and be millionaires in a year, but my husband loves to work, and for pretty much free at that.

have you checked online or eBay for these things? I can't imagine such a simple technology would be so fucking expensive.

Gaazy · Post by **Gaazy** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:19 pm

i had buddies that worked at the ski resort here for a while and they ran on time card punch in punch out type of shit, and you just ned to watch yourself and make sure people arent leavin and gettin their buddies to clock them out later after they left. They used to do it allll the time.

brinstar · Post by **brinstar** » Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:29 pm

WIRE YOUR TIMECLOCKS WITH BOMBS AND TELL THE WORKERS THAT ANY OF THEM CLOCKING IN LATE COULD POTENTIALLY SET OFF A BOMB AND WOULDN'T THEY MISS THEIR TACOS IF THEY WERE DEAD