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Last year during SBCA’s Open Quarterly Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, I took the train down to Washington, DC and met with staff members of my U.S. Representative, Bill Flores. After a productive meeting on Capitol Hill, I made sure to leave an invitation behind for the Congressman to tour our production facility in Lott, Texas.
2018 SBCA Hall of Fame Award
Each year, SBCA inducts an individual into its Hall of Fame who has contributed significantly to the advancement of both SBCA and the structural building components industry. This award recognizes their active participation in the growth and success of SBCA initiatives that serve the industry’s best interests.
Since I started in this industry a year ago, I have realized there are three major issues that the construction industry is facing: lack of skilled labor, lack of time, and lack of money. Fortunately, components manufacturers (CMs) provide a solution to all three.
Every CM is more than that and has the potential to be a lot more with today’s technology
In 1945, our family started the Huskey Company. My grandfather’s brother, Clay Huskey, was building houses around Nashville in the early 1940s. There were not many lumberyards in the area, so he used his connections with Alabama sawmills to personally truck lumber he needed for the houses they were building.
My favorite part of the industry is the exchange of ideas of how people are trying to do things better.
Meet four individuals recently recognized as industry leaders by their peers.
Meet Joseph Maez at Katerra in Phoenix, Arizona.
Young candidates today get more interested when they tour a facility and see the drafting and design part of the process.
Quality. It’s the word you want each and every one of your customers to attribute to your products. It’s a word that implies reliability, a characteristic that builds trust and respect. It’s also a concept that points to superior craftsmanship that differentiates you from your competitors.
Given that our industry is in the component design and engineering business, which is closely related to the building design business, accurate and reliable engineering is central to every CM’s future success.
Two skills every CM needs to get stuff done
A different approach to training new hires.
Why a component manufacturer also became a lawmaker.
SBCA is a CM’s best source for understanding the impacts of rulemaking
How often do you contemplate your scope of work (SOW), as it’s formally defined in ANSI/TPI 1 Chapter 2? That standard was originally published in 1995 and has essentially become law with its adoption into the International Residential and International Building Codes.
“Internships are a perfect way for us to get to know an individual and for the individual to see what a career in the component manufacturing industry would be like. If both sides come to the conclusion that it’s a good fit, it’s a win-win situation and an opportunity for both parties to be successful,” says Mike Petrina, plant manager at Wisconsin Building Supply. “The internship exposes them to a lot of different projects and you can figure out what their strengths and weaknesses are in designing and determine where their passion lies.”
This past year, the Emerging Leaders Committee held two leadership training sessions in conjunction with SBCA’s Open Quarterly Meetings (OQM).
Relationships with other component manufacturers (CMs), and suppliers help our company to be proactive instead of reactive.
Local school or community events that connect employers with job-seekers provide a focused opportunity to talk with many potential employees in a short period of time and can be a valuable way to promote why your company is a great place to work.
We sincerely encourage all SBCA CM Members to read this article on SPIB's Supplement #9, which contains an in-depth analysis of a series of next steps that all members should consider implementing that are intended to provide a best practices roadmap.
As noted in the following three articles:
- When there’s no effective tie-off point for a building, framers have to use a job-specific best practices approach.
- Both Hull and Shifflett agree it is in the best interest of component manufacturers to work with framers to create best practice approaches to fall protection.
- The long-term goal is to host an online database that GCs and framing teams can visit to know who in their industry participates, trains and follows the same safety guidelines.
- In order for a company to grow successfully, it needs to evaluate its current situation and costs accurately and be able to articulate what the company wants to grow into.
- To improve production areas, start with the “5S” approach: sort, straighten, scrub/sanitize, schedule and finally, score the result.
- The right people, the right customers, the right vendors, and most importantly, the right motives grow a successful business.
- The inaugural Lumber Summit held May 14-15 in Charlotte, NC, brought together key lumber industry leaders, the top five lumber producers in North America, and component manufacturers representing approximately 700 million board feet of U.S. structural lumber purchases.
- The SBCA Lumber Collaboration Council (LCC) resulted from the success of the summit.
- A recent industry plant tour furthered relationships with the fire service and is a strong reminder to embrace plant tours as our most effective outreach tool.