Over 32 owners and production managers of foundation repair contractors throughout the United States and Canada attended Best Foot Forward, Excellence in Production Training in Omaha, NE on May 7^th-8^th at Foundation Supportworks® (FSI) Headquarters.  The first morning of training focused on the role of the production manager, and the importance of focusing on high value activities while delegating low value activities to help their production team achieve excellence.  The next topic discussed was creating a healthy “One Team” mentality between the sales and production departments.  These two departments can have strained relationships, but with intentional effort and leadership, a team atmosphere and unity will develop over time.  Training continued with discussions on how a production department’s success can be impacted positively by being organized and having the right tools and equipment available.  The Best Foot Forward program has several examples for production managers to follow to better their crews organization.  Two custom software solutions were also demonstrated:  Tool Tracker™  and Crew Organizer™ .  Tool Tracker™  is a thorough systematic approach to keeping track of serialized and consumable tools by location.  Crew Organizer™  is a great solution for assigning people and equipment to jobs based on skills and abilities of the crew members, as well as availability of equipment.

After lunch, training resumed with a discussion on building a great team.  Many topics were covered, including how to recruit for exceptional production workers, hiring, orientation, setting expectations, compensation, ongoing training, and conducting meetings.  After a short break, the final training session for the day discussed measuring and incentivizing performance, as well as quality assurance procedures.  Confirming quality is important and this is done with a crew scorecard, where each foreman is given a net promoter score by their customers.  Quality is further confirmed by explaining how to inspect what you expect with job site inspections.  The day completed with an evening reception where owners and production managers were able to network with their peers from other parts of the country.

Day two started by discussing the office component of production.  Production scheduling was discussed and production managers were challenged to set scheduling parameters for their crews in addition to having their call center do the scheduling if they aren’t already doing so.  A professional crew has responsibilities before the job and these responsibilities were covered, including a call to the customer on the way to the jobsite.  Once the crew arrives at the jobsite, their professional responsibilities include a systematic approach of communicating with the customer to instill confidence in their crew and the crew’s abilities.  Lastly, the attendees discussed the process of conducting the final walk-through a crew leader should conduct with the homeowner upon completion of the project.  After lunch, BizWiz® presented their latest innovations with the functionality of a hand held tablet for crews at the jobsite.  Training concluded with a discussion on implementation and next steps for each attendee.