Crew Or Sub Work Out?

KES

I was wondering about others on here....

1. Do you build your decks by yourself or do you have a crew?

2. Or do you sub out your decks to other contractors?

3. If you have a crew, how many on it?

I am thinking about trying to step out there further (business wise) and try to get a crew going or sub out work I can not get to in a timely manner. While I do what I can do with another crew.

Thanks,
Peter

BreyerConstruct

Just about everything is in-house.
All LEGIT employees, no "kinda-subs" or the like.

We run 1-3 crews, depending on the time of year and project size.
Let me break that down better:
1 FT Office/Sales.
2 PT Office (Bookkeeping & secretarial)
1 FT Office/Field (Production Manager)
4 FT Field (Carpenters)
1-4 PT/Seasonal (College guys, etc.)

I hope this helps your line of thinking.
I'm the sales guy, but I'll be in the field more over the winter and for special projects that I need to be.
John (PM) will vary as well, depending on the workload. This week he spent a rain day in the office, but the rest of it will be 6-8 hours a day in the field, with 2-6 hours before/after.

Start carefully, and don't waste the future betting on tomorrow.
~Matt

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Stone Mountain

Matt, you have that many people to support 3 crews?

We ran 8-10 crews since April, and for that we have

-Me
-1 full time salesman
-my son Adam, sales/scheduling/running crews
-2 drivers: delivery/demo/pickup
-my future daughter-in-law, part time reception/filing
-my wife: admin/trouble shooting/customer relations/bookkeeping

That's 6 people. We will do about 130 projects this year, averaging about $10-11,000 each.
We could have used at least 3 more crews the whole season

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s. donato

I guess i am a smaller guy :-)

i run 1-2 crews, depending on the project size.

Me - i do all the estimating and 80% of the book keeping(quickbooks does the other 10%) these days. plus i am in the field on larger jobs and jobs that i want to be there for.

2 PT Office (Bookkeeping & secretarial last 10% of the business stuff)

1 Carpenter sub - that works some jobs by himself or i will be there with him when its a larger job. sometimes i run one job while he runs another.

1-4 PT i also have a small group of labors that i call on when needed. but sometimes me and carpenter work a job faster by ourselves then with "help".

Right now work is pretty sporadic and its hard for me to just say i will never go out in the field b/c i want to concentrate on finding jobs and setting up a more solid schedule so i could hire more guys. if it was up to me i would probably get a salesmen so i could manage the jobs after we get them instead of concentrating on all aspects of the job.

if i could make a good living i would probably go work for a company and a PM - as long as i got a tool expense account ;-)

i guess there is always next year ;-)

SLSTech

1 Man show @ the moment with others I can bring in as needed. Up till about 5 months ago I figured I would be expanding & then the market around here dried up - big time. Then all the people traveling & working in Birmingham were all of a sudden out of a job & figured they could do the work here.

Sorry, back to your issue - Most decks can be built fine by 1 individual that knows their S&^%. I would say for speed, you should have a total of 2 to 3 people total working on a deck / framing. You start getting bigger crews than that & you will have a lot of standing around happening. I'm glad to see you are growing, but I would caution about making sure your sales & work load can support more individuals. Trust me it is no fun firing someone - I can guarantee laying someone off due to your miscalculation, etc... would be worse.

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MALCO.New.York

Subbing out work is ALWAYS great IF you can find GOOD subs. That is if you have a GOOD Market to work with.

It allows you MORE TIME to sell and Manage. A coupla grand a job is GREAT profit for never lifting a Hammer!!

Less profit. MORE jobs, Market permitting!

Just MY experience.

As they say....Work SMARTER not HARDER!

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KES

Thanks guys for responding. I was talking to another builder in my area and he does nothing, but sub work out. I still like to swing a hammer, but want my company to grow.

Peter