andy mcfarland » The AsBuilt Design and As-Built Services Blog

As-Built Surveys Are Going Nationwide

Mar 112013

When PPM was founded in 2002, we were a small company in Huntington Beach with no employees and only a handful of landscape architect clients. At the time, we had no idea if there were any other companies doing As-Built surveys, or how many people even needed the service, all we knew was that our clients seemed to be happy with what we were offering them. As PPM has grown and been fortunate enough to serve a large group of clients with a diverse range of projects, we have learned so much more about the market for As-Built measuring services.

Over the last 3 years, a new trend we have noticed is that there are more and more clients looking for a company with the ability to provide professional site surveying for high volume projects on a nationwide basis. These clients include retail chains, restaurant franchises, government agencies, real estate portfolio managers, and more.

As-Built surveying has not been around for very long as a stand-alone business. Traditionally the building measurement has been done in-house, by the architecture firm that is working on the project. As a result, it is still very much a regional industry. There are As-Built companies in many of the major U.S. markets, but until very recently there have been none with the nationwide workforce and project management expertise necessary to handle the biggest multi-site projects. So in the absence of a nationwide solution, the client has 2 options, neither of which are particularly attractive:

Find a local architect/surveyor in every market where you have a physical presence. This strategy requires spending a lot of time and effort to develop and build relationships with potentially dozens of vendors. In addition, it is hard to maintain consistency in service, deliverables, and price when you are working with so many different firms.
Send an employee to every site. With this option, it is difficult to scale quickly for a large program. You have to hire and train new employees, or adapt existing employees to the job. As-Built surveying is a highly technical job that is difficult to do correctly, and accuracy is critical. Not to mention potentially significant costs to travel all over the country.

At PPM, we have seen the need for a nationwide As-Built solution, so we are building the infrastructure necessary to service the biggest nationwide clients. We have a network of over 75 professional surveyors spread throughout the United States and Canada. So this means that in almost every case, we can send a local surveyor to your location and avoid travel costs. It also means that we have the manpower to handle high-volume projects with tight deadlines. In addition, we have a Project Management and QA team in California that is experienced in working with multi-site projects.

We will standardize the site survey process for you so that you will always receive a consistent deliverable, done exactly the same at every location. We will communicate with you throughout the project so that you always know exactly what is going on with every site. We offer fixed cost pricing for nationwide site survey programs that, in most cases, are cheaper than the amount you might pay just to travel to the site.

If you have the need for As-Built surveys on a regional or nationwide basis, please give PPM a call at 855-AS-BUILT.

Andy McFarland, President

How Accurate do YOUR As-Built Plans need to be?

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Feb 062013

At Precision Property Measurements, most of our clients are architects, designers and facility managers that work on remodel projects. For every new project, one of the first decisions they need to make is how to obtain an accurate set of a As-Built drawings. Many times, there are no existing drawings to start with, and so it is an easy decision to call PPM for a professional As-Built measurement service. Other times, our client will come across some existing plans, created either by the original design architect, or by a subsequent contractor who worked on the property. When this situation occurs, a choice needs to be made: Use the existing drawings? Or re-measure and make sure the As-Built drawings are accurate?

In the last ten years, we have field-checked hundreds of existing As-Built plans for accuracy, with a wide variety of results. Sometimes, the plans are structurally sound, with only minor dimensional errors to adjust and missing elements to add. Other times, the existing drawings are worthless, and we need to scrap them and start from scratch. Whenever we run across one of these, I can only wonder how often existing plans are assumed to be “good enough” and used without being verified, and what kind of problems this creates.

Recently, we had a client confronted with just such a dilemma. The project seemed simple enough, just a redesign of a small backyard. The homeowner was a professional engineer, and he offered to measure the site plan himself to save money on the project. Our client was hesitant but ultimately agreed, not wanting to question the ability of the property owner, and figuring that it would be relatively easy to work around any minor errors.

After completing the design and starting the installation, our client started to notice several problems that were too big to fix on the fly. After several days of frustration, they broke down and called us. PPM visited the property and fixed the As-Built site plan, so that our client was able to move forward with a design that fit the space.

Although the project was back on track, many hours of labor and materials were wasted as a result of this simple, yet critical error. Our client assured us that they would never again try to cut corners by using a questionable As-Built base plan!

When you choose to work with PPM, you can be assured that you will be starting your project with accurate As-Built plans. Whether you have existing plans that just need to be checked, or require a complete re-measurement of your project from scratch, we will make sure that your As-Builts can be relied on, allowing you to focus your efforts on what you do best!

To view a comparison of the PPM Site Plan with the original Site Plan referred to in this post, and see what a difference a professional As-Built service can make, please click here.

Tell Us How We Did!

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Dec 122012

I think that a common mistake of most small businesses is to assume that no news is good news. In other words, if they don’t hear anything bad from their customers, than everything must be good, right? But the reality is that the most customers won’t say anything, unless something was really bad. They are more likely to just keep silent about a minor problem, and then quietly take their business elsewhere the next time the need for that particular service arises. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone: the customer has to keep searching to find the level of service they really want, and the business remains oblivious to a easily fixable problem which is costing them business. At PPM, we are guilty of this mistake all the time. When we deliver a completed As-Built project, it is much easier to move forward and turn our focus to the next project, rather than making the extra effort to solicit feedback from our client.

So what is the small business to do? If you really want to hear what your customers think about you, you need to ask! You can call them, email them, send them a form to fill out – whatever it takes. The point is that your customer needs to know that you want to hear their feedback. This is particularly important with a new customer who just used your service for the first time. Since they are not already familiar with what it’s like to do business with you, new customers will usually be your best source of honest feedback with a fresh perspective. Never assume that a client will just offer to tell you about a problem – it is your job to give them a mechanism to do just that.

Asking for feedback is only the first part of the solution though. What matters after that is what you do with it. Do you really care about what your customers are telling you? Or are you just trying to make them think you care? You need to be ready to hear what your problems are, and then take the necessary steps to fix them. If a new customer tells you about a issue that they had on their first job, and then the same thing happens on their next project, you have lost that customer forever. On the other hand, if they see that you have fixed the issue, you will have earned the loyalty of that customer. There are few things more satisfying than knowing your feedback is valued and actually caused the company to make a change based on your suggestion.

At PPM, we encourage feedback from our customers by inviting all new clients to fill out a feedback form on our website after their first As-Built project. We incentivize them to take their time and give us this information by offering a $10 gift card upon completion. In addition, for the first time this year we are sending out a general online survey form to ALL customers that did a project with us in 2012. Constant Contact makes this very easy by providing a customizable survey template you can use and email to all of your clients. We think that the information obtained from these initiatives is well worth the time and expense. We look forward to hearing what you think!

When You Screw Up – Make it Right!

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Nov 202012

At PPM, we work on approximately 800 – 1,000 projects per year, and most of them involve thousands of measurements and multiple As-Built drawings as part of our deliverables. Despite our best efforts at utilizing fail proof survey techniques and extensive quality control, every once in awhile we deliver a plan that has an error in it. We are not perfect. A mistake is especially critical for a service like As-Builts, where the entire product is based on a promise of accuracy. Over the years, we have learned a few things about how to handle those rare circumstances when we make an error in one of our plans:

Deal with the problem head on. Never make excuses. Regardless of how the error actually happened – it was our fault. Admit the mistake to the client and apologize. This allows us to focus on the solution.
Do whatever it takes to fix the problem. We ask the client what we can do, if anything, to make it right. Maybe the mistake was caught early and no harm was done. Or maybe the client has already spent some time and money as result of the error. Whatever the situation, we make it our first priority, ahead of all other business and without regard to cost, to fix the problem that we have caused.
Figure out exactly what went wrong. After the client has been taken care of and made whole, then we turn our attention to the cause of the problem. What breakdown occurred in our systems which allowed this error to happen? What changes need to be made to prevent it from happening again? Most errors are not problems with people, they are problems with systems – so we try to keep the focus there.

Unfortunately, we had just such an experience last week – our first plan error in over 500 projects. We had recently delivered a retail As-Built to a brand new client for a remodel project in a Las Vegas mall. They contacted us on Friday afternoon to let us know that they suspected we had incorrectly drawn the angle of one of the store walls. After an internal review, we were able to confirm that there was sufficient reason to believe they were right – we had likely made a mistake. We had a surveyor on a flight to Las Vegas the very next day, Saturday. We fixed the error on the plan and delivered the corrected plans to the client right away. I don’t know if this client will choose to work with us again, but I do know that we made our best possible effort to remedy the situation as soon as possible, and they seemed to appreciate the effort.

Someday, we will be able to achieve our goal of 100% accuracy in every single one of our plans. When that day arrives, the only use for our “Error Recovery” system will be to prop up our projector at company meetings. But until that happens, we owe it to our clients, and ourselves, to face our mistakes head on and do whatever we can to make things right.

New Project for Uncle Sam

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Aug 082012

Last week, PPM kicked off an exciting new project for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. We have been hired to measure and draw the As-Built floor plans of over 600,000 SF of office space currently leased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The project is scheduled to last until November of this year, and includes surveys of over 70 ICE locations throughout the United States. In addition to measuring and drawing the floor plans, we will be calculating the square footage of each area using the BOMA standard.

Earlier this year, we surveyed a previous phase of ICE locations, sharing the contract with 2 other As-Built firms. For the current phase of work (Phase 2) we have been selected as the sole As-Built survey contractor by the lead contractor for the project, Deloitte. We are very proud to have won this high profile project!

This project represents a new opportunity for PPM, and we are eager to take on the unique challenges that it presents. First, of course, is the labor and logistical challenges presented by such a large and geographically spread out group of office surveys. Then, there is the added challenge of paperwork, tracking, and reporting required when contracting with the U.S. Government. Finally, since these are high security locations, all PPM staff have to pass a thorough government security clearance process.

We look forward to doing our best work for this very important client!

Andy McFarland
President – PPM

PPM is hiring! Do you know a Customer Service professional?

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Jul 222012

We are currently looking for applicants to fill a full-time position as our Customer Service Representative. Our current CSR, Lindsey Grey, will be returning to her studies at Cal State Long Beach at the end of August. She will remain with PPM in a part-time capacity, but we need a full-time professional to take over and provide the level of excellent service that we hope you have come to expect from PPM. Do you know anybody that would be qualified and interested in this opportunity?

Our Customer Service Representative is an absolutely critical member of our team. This person is responsible for all of the primary communication with our clients (phone and email), as well as project management tasks including proposals, scheduling and delivery. Excellent communication skills are a must. In addition, the position requires strong organizational skills and a proficiency with common computer programs. Finally, and most importantly, a positive attitude and friendly demeanor! We only have about 8 people in our office so there is nowhere to hide the grumpy person!

If you know anybody that you think would be a good fit, please feel free to forward my email address to them directly so they can apply: andy@ppmco.net. They can also view a complete description of the position, as well as other details such as pay and start date, on our ad posting on Craigslist:

http://losangeles.craigslist.org/lgb/ofc/3149540146.html

Thank you, and we look forward to introducing our new Customer Service Representative in about 3 weeks!

Andy McFarland
President – PPM

Still local, but the neighborhood is growing

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Jun 122012

One of the things we have learned at PPM as a result of the slower economy in the last 4 years is that we can’t rely solely on our local Southern California market to provide the work that we need to reach our goals. Our first large project that required more than just a 1-2 hour drive (depending on LA traffic) was early 2009, when we were hired to measure 55 Long’s Drugstores throughout California – half of which were in the Bay Area. For 3-4 months we devoted about 67% of our staff hours to this one project alone.

While there are practical limits on the traveling capabilities of a small service company like PPM, that project taught us that we can successfully take on projects beyond our “local” market – if the circumstances are right. It also taught us that if we wanted to expand our reach, we would need more resources to be able to adapt to the heavy workloads and wide geographic spreads of large multi-site As-Built projects.

Over the last 3 years, we have built a network of 20-30 surveyors, located throughout the US, that we can utilize on our out-of-state projects. In addition, we have worked hard to develop the project management systems and capabilities that these projects require. The result is that today, we get about 30-50% of our business from projects located outside of Southern California. So far, in 2012 we have performed As-Built surveys in over 20 US states. So while our primary focus continues to be serving our local clients in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, it is no longer the only market that we have to rely on for our work.

Listen To What Your Numbers are Telling You

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May 232012

At PPM, we have a passion for numbers. Our entire business is based on numbers, in the form of the hundreds or even thousands of measurements that we take every day in the field for our various As-Built projects. Then, there are completely different numbers that are generated by the business itself every day. Leads, sales, expenses, turn-around time, productivity… – these are all numbers that we keep track of on a monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily basis.

But often in the routine of collecting all those numbers, we forget to stop to take a look at them and see what they are telling us. Recently, I was glad to have them available to me when I noticed something change in the business. After a long stretch of being very busy, I noticed that we weren’t getting as many calls for new projects over the last few weeks. After a week of speculating what the causes could be (and wondering if it was happening to everyone or just to PPM) I finally remembered to look at our numbers – and I was encouraged by what I saw.

I opened up a spreadsheet that we keep which shows the dollar amount of proposals that we write every month. I found that for the years 2010 and 2011, the single slowest month for new proposals, in both cases, was the month of May. Now, I can’t tell you why May is consistently a slow month, (my current theory is that families are trying to get through the school year), but it was comforting to see that this same pattern has played out the last 2 years – and June has historically seen a big jump in activity. Our numbers are telling us to get ready!

For more information about PPM, visit us online at www.ppmco.net or call 1-855-ASBUILT today!

The AsBuilt Design and As-Built Services Blog

As-Built Surveys Are Going Nationwide

How Accurate do YOUR As-Built Plans need to be?

Tell Us How We Did!

When You Screw Up – Make it Right!

New Project for Uncle Sam

PPM is hiring! Do you know a Customer Service professional?

Still local, but the neighborhood is growing

Listen To What Your Numbers are Telling You

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