There’s no such thing as a low-stress time when you’re in the business of furnishing and installing interior
CIP Finishes President Paul Milde, in a pre-pandemic photo.
finishing hardware in multi-family residential projects. CIP Finishes, which works on large apartment communities in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, must coordinate orders and installation on projects with hundreds of units—each with as many as 70 different types of hardware pieces to be installed.
“This is a high-stress job. That is our reality,” says CIP Finishes President Paul Milde. “But the fact that we are used to solving problems in real time as they come up left us well-equipped to handle the unprecedented impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our job sites, our supply chains and so many other aspects of the way we do business.”
Here are six lessons from CIP Finishes’ experience keeping projects running on-time and on-budget throughout the pandemic.
- Don’t wait to take action. CIP Finishes’ installers may be the last subcontractors in on major multi-unit residential projects, but when it started to become clear near the end of the first quarter of 2020 that the novel coronavirus was going to significantly impact supply chains, the company’s sales team kicked into high gear to try to head off delays that could impact customers’ construction schedules. By working with clients to expedite orders, then offering low-cost storage in the company’s new Stafford County headquarters, CIP Finishes was able to help many clients avoid delays. As supply chain and shipping delay problems persist throughout the industry, the company continues to take an aggressive approach to helping clients keep projects on-track.
- Be relentless about finding solutions. With nearly 15 years of experience in the industry between them, CIP Finishes Senior Estimator Jennifer Fousek and Project Estimator Travis Turner have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the product lines the company sells, and have cultivated strong relationships with manufacturers. Whenever they were told that a particular item would not arrive in time to meet a customer’s schedule during the pandemic, Fousek and Turner put that experience to work as they tirelessly searched for alternative products that would meet the aesthetic, functional and budget needs of the customer. With all of these changes needing approval from both the project owner and the architect, this can be an intense process. “It takes an awareness of what the products are and who we can rely on,” Fousek says.
- Be willing to go the extra mile—or 200. When the U.S./Mexico border shutdown made it nearly impossible to get the sophisticated keyless locks needed for the Main Street apartment community in Rockville, MD, CIP Finishes estimators were able to work out an arrangement to get a portion of the locks from a third party at the same cost. The only remaining problem was that typical shipping would never be able to get them to the job site in time. Project Manager Michael Bragin stepped up. A master gunnery sergeant retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, Bragin drove four hours each way to pick up the locks in New Jersey in time for them to be installed in Rockville. He even took his daughter along with him to turn the task into an opportunity for family time. It’s one of several instances where CIP Finishes employees have driven for hours to destinations in the East Coast and Midwest regions to make sure products are where they need to be when installers get to a job. Putting people on the road for hours costs money, and must be done selectively. “Balancing the bottom line against keeping customers happy is an art form, and it’s something our team is very good at,” Milde says.
- Be aware of how employees are affected by the pandemic—both at home and on the job. You can’t set foot on a construction job site without undergoing safety training, so it’s second-nature to CIP Finishes installers to adhere to site-specific safety and health protocols. That made the transition to mask-wearing, social-distancing and other COVID-19 guidelines fairly smooth. What is more difficult to manage is the disruption to employees’ home lives, as many of them have become teachers to their children and have needed to balance childcare with partners as schools closed. With schools in the area preparing to open for 100% virtual learning this fall, Fousek says the company is working with employees to allow them to work from home on certain days, or to shift their work hours to early mornings when needed to work around their children’s schooling needs. “We will make it work,” Fousek says, adding that she’s found it more important to be intentional about staying in touch with colleagues and what they are working on, tracking requests and having regular staff check-ins to ensure nothing slips through the cracks as schedules shift.
- Remember: It’s not a crisis, it’s the job. Nobody who works in the construction industry expects to come to work and have everything go exactly as planned. While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruptions across many facets of the business, the smaller crises CIP Finishes worked through over more than 30 years in the industry gave the company experience to draw upon when problems arose. “I am constantly reminding people who work for us that this level of expectation is part of the job. it is never going to go away,” Milde says. “How you process it is the only thing you are in control of.”
- Success is measured in repeat business. “There is no better way to gauge a job well-done than repeat customers, and we have seen that throughout all of this,” Milde says. CIP Finishes has maintained a pipeline value of more than $14 million throughout the pandemic, and continues to process more than three-quarters of a million dollars of work per month. Milde says celebrating that success is important. The company keeps a map of all of its current projects prominently displayed in its headquarters. “That map is not just so we know where our jobs are,” Milde says, “but it is also there so we can be reminded of how successful we have become at doing this job. We are good at this, and I try to reinforce that as much as possible.”