Stanbrooke Custom Homes
Stanbrooke Custom Homes is a full service custom home builder, serving seven counties in Washington state. Stanbrooke feels that building a custom home can save their clients 5-15% as compared to buying a new existing home. Besides the savings, their clients enjoy the freedom of selecting their own lot, styles, colors, options and upgrades. Stanbrooke provides two design centers for their clients' convenience. www.stanbrooke.com
Stanbrooke's Administrative Offices
Challenge
Schedule and track an exploding number of home building projects spread across a seven-county area
Solution with HeadsUp
HeadsUp provides Critical Path Method scheduling in a web based format which permits access anywhere, anytime. Stanbrooke's one Scheduler creates all schedules from a project template
Field Supervisors are daily able to capture pertinent construction site activity, & schedules and documents are automatically available in the Field
Results with HeadsUp
As of October of 2006, Stanbrooke had over 200 active projects/schedules with some 734 Daily Reports just for that month.
Five site supervisors either use laptops in the field or personal computers at home to fill out their Daily Reports and keep the schedules up-to-date
Future - Stanbrooke is looking at expanding their use of HeadsUp by allowing home owners to log into HeadsUp and follow their home's building progress, and integrating Purchase Orders from Master Builder™ into HeadsUp for marking deliveries in the field
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By Robert Celaschi, Contributing Editor, Puget Sound Business Journal
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“I think the key thing is understanding the market you are in, and delivering a product that meets what the market needs. It sounds simple enough, but it’s so easy as a small business owner to chase every opportunity. What you really need to do is pick a course and stick with it." |
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Stanbrooke President, Tom Cross |
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Stanbrooke Custom Homes escapes many of the risks involved in home building, which has help the young firm to grow rapidly. Stanbrooke customers have already bought the land and already decided to put a home on it. And because each Stanbrooke home is built on contract, someone else is financing the construction. All this helps explain how Stanbrooke could get off the ground in 2002 with only $500 in startup capital and grow into a company of $5.8 million by the end of last year. Keeping down the prices also helps bring in customers. The company claims it can save its clients 5 to 15 percent compared to buying a new existing home. What’s more, customers get to select their own lots, styles, colors, options and upgrades.
President Tom Cross joined the Puyallup-based company in 2002 when the growth was really starting to speed up. While he’s tried to sustain that growth, he also sees a responsibility to keep it from spinning out of control. “I think the key thing is understanding the market you are in, and delivering a product that meets what the market needs. It sounds simple enough, but it’s so easy as a small business owner to chase every opportunity. What you really need to do is pick a course and stick with it, “ he said.
“We turn down deals all the time”, said Cross. “It’s always hard to turn down business when you want to grow, but if you want to be successful, you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin .” Cross emphasizes the importance of Stanbrooke having good processes in place. He feels confident that his staff knows what to do on the job.
Cross won’t pin a number on the ideal size for the company, but said it’s a lot bigger than what it is today.