Finding balance: How to prioritize projects and personal time with tech

Show Notes

This episode was recorded in 2023. Because Buildertrend continues to improve and expand its platform, some features or services mentioned may have changed.

On this episode of “The Building Code,” Zach is sitting down in studio with the husband-and-wife duo from the local Omaha company Sierra Homes. Matt Kronaizl, owner and builder, heads up the construction side of things while his wife, Tamarah, leads interior design and sales. Their team is dedicated to making clients’ dreams a reality when it comes to their perfect home. Matt and Tamarah work closely with homeowners to ensure all their needs are met from beginning to end.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about how construction software has played a substantial role in organizing their business, communicating with clients and bringing balance to their personal lives.

You’ve been Buildertrend customers for a long time – how did you know you needed project management software in the early days of your business?

Matt: “Mostly coming from having some experience in seeing the commercial world, from my past employer. We used project management software in a different way and in a different environment. But I’ve always been very organized, and I’ve always felt like that organization helps everything flow better and easier. After a year or two in business, it was like once I grew past one house at a time or something like that, I’m like, ‘God, it’d be so nice to just have something. There has to be something out there.’”

Tamarah: “I found you guys. I was like, ‘Hey, let’s try this.’ Then we saw you guys at the International Builders’ Show as one of the main sponsors. I’m like, ‘Yeah, we made the right decision.’”

How has your use of the platform evolved over the years?

Matt: “For a lot of years, we really focused on the scheduling aspect of it and managing our clients’ selections and change orders. As our company has grown, the time clock piece of it has become much more important in billing back hours to clients and job-cost tracking. But I would say, in the last five years, one of our biggest challenges was clients texting us at all times of the night. We really made a push probably three, four years ago. We just started a process where we were like, ‘Go ahead. Feel free to text us if you want about something little or a question or whatever, but don’t expect a response from us, and we’re probably going to respond either in a comment or an email within Buildertrend, so that we can find it later.’ That’s been huge because it’s really brought a lot of balance back from evenings and off hours. That’s been one thing I think that’s really helped us at least on a personal standpoint.”

Tamarah: “It’s communication because the client doesn’t always see everything that’s going on, everything we’re doing every day and just to see a report, I think it’s huge. Also, utilizing Comments under Selections. We document whenever a light arrives or when flooring arrives or if there’s a pushback on a date. We’re doing that when we receive the notification. That helps clients know, too, ‘Okay, all my stuff is coming in or it’s not.’ It’s a another communication tool.”

Scheduling is the first step to a successful project for Cardinal Crest Homes, a business that’s making eight-plus figures a year. Download this free scheduling milestone template to simplify your project planning process.

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Transcript

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, everybody. Zach Wojtowicz here on “The Building Code” and today we have a live guest, which is always the best experience. It’s really excited to have Tamarah and Matt of a local builder here in Omaha, called Sierra Homes. What we’re going to get into their business. They are longtime Buildertrend users. Welcome to “The Building Code,” to both of you.

Matt Kronaizl:

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Thanks.

Zach Wojtowicz:

First time on a podcast?

Matt Kronaizl:

Absolutely.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How’s it feel?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Exciting.

Zach Wojtowicz:

There we go. That’s what we want to hear. Come on. Yeah, we need to do this on Friday afternoon and get the bourbon out.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yes.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You know, and just let it roll.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, it’s great to have you here. You guys are absolute studs on Buildertrend. Let’s talk a little bit about your business. What do you do here in Omaha and can I get just an absolute steal on construction if I … feel free to say no.

Matt Kronaizl:

There are no steals in construction. Yes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Fair.

Matt Kronaizl:

Other than the steel that goes into it. Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Tell me about your business. What do you guys do?

Matt Kronaizl:

Well, yeah, so we are a luxury custom home builder here in Omaha. We build anywhere from 12 to 15 projects a year. We do some larger additions and remodels, but for the most part our bread and butter is full one-off custom homes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. 12 to 15 a year?

Matt Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Nice. What are your roles? We don’t always have two people in the podcast, so what do you guys do at Sierra?

Matt Kronaizl:

Well, we are husband and wife.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh. Family run business.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yep. We started over 13 years ago and Tamarah runs the design side of the business, and I run the construction side of it. We lead our team from two different avenues.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Dynamic duo.

Matt Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How big is your team?

Matt Kronaizl:

There’s six of us. There’s six plus Tamarah and I, so there’s eight total, and we’ve just got great team that anywhere from interior design, obviously admin and accounting staff.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Then we’ve got a couple in-house carpenters that do a lot of our finish and custom carpentry work.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, you do?

Matt Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Interesting.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Have you always had in-house carpentry or is it something that you’ve moved into more recently?

Matt Kronaizl:

We moved into it about five years ago, actually, and we just got to the point where we wanted to control that part of the build.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

A little bit closer to home.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’ve been hearing that more and more lately, and I’ve been at Buildertrend for five years and when I started, people would laugh at me. They’re like “In-house carpentry, why would you ask that?” Now, I feel like I can’t find people that aren’t doing that.

Matt Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. We’ve just taken the parts as we’ve grown some of the higher-end finishes and so forth, it’s just easier to control it in-house and be able to have staff onboard that you know what they can do and what they can’t do and not have to rely on is someone going to show up tomorrow to get this done?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I was going to say, is it improved efficiency? Is it made it so that your jobs are completed faster and there’s less rigamarole around logistics of like, “Are they going to be there to get the framing done or get the work done we need on the lumber side?”

Matt Kronaizl:

It’s really just helped, I would say our quality as one, but also mostly our creativity.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

You know, like all those wainscoting walls.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

If we need custom furniture.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yep.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Or wine storage.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They’re building you guys custom furniture, too?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm. They have, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. One’s a little bit more an artist at heart.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Kronaizl:

The other one is a little bit more of a contractor at heart.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

They make a good duo of putting their heads together when a client comes to us and is like, “Hey, we saw this,” or “We brainstormed this up, how do we get this?” We usually just show it to them and they’re like, “Oh yeah, we got it.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. We want to talk more about that. How has your company evolved and grown over the years? You’ve got in-house labors. You guys have been in business now 12-13 years, how else have you shifted your approach to things?

Matt Kronaizl:

Well, when we started out, it was really a hobby of mine, and I was just doing a couple spec homes a year.

Zach Wojtowicz:

For fun.

Matt Kronaizl:

For fun.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yes. He’s serious.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love that.

Matt Kronaizl:

To fill some time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

I was young, didn’t have any …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Were they ground up specs or were you buying property and remodeling and trying to …

Matt Kronaizl:

They were ground up.

Zach Wojtowicz:

They were ground up?

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. We got started in the semi-custom world and doing middle of the road houses or middle price point I would say, and trying to throw in a few higher-end features that you would see in what I considered luxury homes at the time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Try and bring those into the mid-price point market.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Then it just grew from there and eventually consumed my life.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah, eventually …

Zach Wojtowicz:

You said that with a thousand yard stare, and I just couldn’t escape.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah. I was like, “Okay, you can’t work till 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. every day. You got to let something go.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Out of the job site after work?

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

What’d you do before?

Matt Kronaizl:

Well, my main gig was human resources with …

Zach Wojtowicz:

That is a first, I think for me, with construction.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Well, for an engineering firm.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, okay.

Matt Kronaizl:

There was a lot of business management, was probably half of my job.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

I had a lot of flexibility there and this became a hobby, and then it turned into a business and people started reaching out.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Saw your work.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Then we transitioned into full-time. Then since then, as the years have gone by, the homes have gotten bigger, the ideas have gotten bigger, mostly coming from my wife who dreams up crazy stuff that we have to try and figure out how to incorporate into the house.

From there, most of our business now, like I said, is just transitioned into the full custom world and we still consider ourselves diverse in that we still do some semi-custom work, and we do some basement finishes, and we do remodels, but for the most part, most of the remodels that we do are another whole home almost.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm. Yeah. How about your design philosophy? Have you always been the designer? How have you seen things change from the design side?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I mean, actually my background is in finance, but yeah, things are changing every year. Color schemes and what people expect. Organization is huge now.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I mean, it’s always evolving.

Zach Wojtowicz:

My wife’s all about the mudroom right now.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Where’d you pick this up at?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Her friends at work.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Right, right. But yeah, there’s always something new out there that trends are changing and just trying to stay on top of that, but it’s fun.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. How much staff did you have on the design side, or is it just you?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Myself and Bailey.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Okay.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Have another. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, really tight-knit.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. You guys have been Buildertrend customers for a long time, as I mentioned before. That’s actually pretty unusual. A lot of newer construction companies, they come to Buildertrend, but they run into issues of like, “I’m so small that having a system like this seems overkill,” which is fair. It’s like you can be pretty scrappy for a long time. It sounds like probably when you were doing your spec builds, you were probably just running your numbers on Excel, or I’ve seen people just have whiteboards, all of that. Why did you decide you needed a system so early in your build process or your construction company process?

Matt Kronaizl:

Right. Mostly coming from having some experience in seeing the commercial world, just from my past employer. I mean, we used project management software in a different way and in a different environment.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

But I’ve always been very organized, and I’ve always felt like that organization helps everything flow better and easier.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

After a year or two in business, it was like once I grew past one house at a time or something like that, I’m like, “God, it’d be so nice to just have something,” that there has to be something out there. Obviously, Buildertrend was much younger then as well, and so, Tamarah sent me a link I think to it. We were just talking about it earlier this week.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I’m like, “I found you guys.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was about to say back in the day, she said you found us on the internet?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I was like, “Hey, let’s try this.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Did you know they were in Omaha?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Mm-hmm.

Matt Kronaizl:

Well, we did once we looked it up and I was like, “Oh, they’re local, we can …”

Zach Wojtowicz:

You know, a local tech company.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Totally, totally a thing in Nebraska.

Matt Kronaizl:

Right. We made an inquiry or a phone call, and we went over to what at the time was your guys’ little tiny office in a little strip mall.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You’re like, “Uh-oh, this tech company. I don’t know about them.”

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Things have changed.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah, I mean, it was above a garage.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We started in a basement, so by then the founders were probably like, “Ah, we’re rocking it. They got real offices.”

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Then we saw you guys at the builder show.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

As one of the main sponsors. I’m like, “Yeah, we made the right decision.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Yeah. Did you go to this most recent IBS?

Matt Kronaizl:

We did not. It’s been a couple of years since we’ve gone, but …

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Well, if you come this next year, we can run it back. I’ll be there. Charley gets sensitive. He doesn’t get to travel as much as I do. It’s kind of a thing, but I think he’s going to be there, too.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Oh.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We look like the Apple Store now.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Literally, we just dominate the floor.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah, in the middle.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Our marketing team spends so much time planning this, and I’m always like, “Well, message sent.” We just dominate.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Right.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

No. You met at The Builders’ Show, and you were like, “This is the right decision.”

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Do you remember you were a sales person by chance?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

No.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Or your first trainer?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

That was a long time ago.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know. I asked …

Matt Kronaizl:

We had Paul for a long time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Paul? Yeah? Yeah, I asked because they’re probably still here at this company, and that’s one of the cool things about seeing us grow.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

That’s cool.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s like you guys have grown, you’ve got new people. We have new people that they still work here in prominent positions. I was asking because one of them could be my boss, so I was going to be looking for a good row sesh I could clip and send to him.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Well you picked it, you decided to go with it. With that, how have you grown with Buildertrend? Do you have something about it that keeps you with us, or?

Matt Kronaizl:

You know, for a lot of years we really focused on the scheduling, obviously, aspect of it and managing our clients’ selections through it and change orders, obviously.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

That was our primary use of it. Obviously, as our company has grown, the time card, time clock piece of it has become much more important in billing back hours to clients and job cost tracking and so forth. But I would say probably in the last five years really one of our biggest challenges was obviously clients texting you at all times of the night.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah. Then it’s like I get a text and Matt gets … We’re trying to piecemeal it back together.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. It was like doing …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Can we get a group chat going here?

Matt Kronaizl:

Well, then you had group chat with some employees and client or just you and them and it was like, “Okay, where was that message? What was it? What did they say?” You’re eight months down the road trying to back something up or find something?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Search.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Right.

Matt Kronaizl:

We really made a push probably three, four at least years ago. We just started a process where we were like, “Go ahead. Feel free to text us if you want about something little or a question or whatever, but don’t expect a response from us, and we’re probably going to respond either in a comment or an email within Buildertrend, so that we can find it later.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Matt Kronaizl:

That’s been huge because it’s really brought a lot of balance back from evenings and off hours and so forth. That’s been one huge thing I think that’s really helped us at least on a personal standpoint.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

But then also as we’ve grown, we’ve got another project manager now and so forth, we really started to take advantage of the Daily Logs and the photos that back that up and just communicating, “Okay, we were on site today. Here’s the discussions we had with X, Y, Z contractor or subcontractor. Here’s the decisions that were made.” Then sharing that with the owners, so that they know not only are we doing our job, but they also know here’s the challenges that came up today. Here’s how we resolved them. They see that and it’s an easy …

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Touch.

Matt Kronaizl:

It’s an easy touch, A, but it’s also if they read that and they’re like, “Oh no, I don’t agree with something in there,” then they can reach out before it’s too late.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Or if we can say, “Here’s the challenge we were dealing with. Here’s how we averted it, or here’s the decision we made and here’s why we made this decision,” A lot of times it just eliminates that question when they go out to the house, and they walk through it and be like, “Why does this look this way,” or why this not finished?” Or Whatever. It’s like, “Okay, if we’ve got it documented.” They already know, “Hey, the plumbers can’t finish this until next week,” then they are not asking us, “Why does the schedule show the plumbers are done? It doesn’t look like they’re done.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. It’s interesting because something so simple, like a daily log, is so powerful, and I have some interesting data that only 52% of our customers use Daily Logs right now. I’m always like, “Why?” It is that, it sounds like it took you a while to even get there a little bit.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yep. Took us a long time to get there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. What was the reason for that?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Just time?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

It takes time.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

A large part of it was, yeah, it takes time. It takes time to document it. Once we started it, we just started playing around with it, and we were first like, “Okay, do we do it? Do we share it with the owner, do we not?” We started internally not sharing it, and then we started seeing, we’re like, well, we’re just going to try it. We’re going to share everything completely open, transparent with the owner and see what the reaction is.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Someone convinced you to do that. Probably Buildertrend.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Well, it’s…

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We do a lot of just like, “Do it, just have a guinea pig.”

Matt Kronaizl:

We were just like, I think it was one of my employees actually. He was like, “Well, we’ve done it this way now, let’s try it the other way. We can always revert back if it becomes a problem.” It’s been nothing but positive.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah. It’s just communication because the client doesn’t always see everything that’s going, everything we’re doing every day and just to see a report, I think it’s huge.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, and it mitigates risk, too, in a lot of ways.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Gets out of the, he said/she said.

Matt Kronaizl:

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’ve got horror stories from my clients that didn’t document Daily Logs where it’s like in court you don’t have evidence.

Matt Kronaizl:

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s worst-case scenario, but that’s the value for any business owner is you’re protecting yourself, you’re improving communication. It’s the simplest thing you can have in the platforms. That’s amazing. It’s very common to hear people later realize that. How often are you guys sharing your Daily Logs? Is it daily or do you have it on a cadence?

Matt Kronaizl:

I would say it’s twice a week.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Twice a week?

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

On average. It depends on the phase of the project and what’s going on, but sometimes it’s daily, sometimes it’s once a week. You know?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Mm-hmm.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Also, utilizing Comments, like under Selections. When Covid hit, the supply chain has been awesome. We just document whenever a light arrives or when flooring arrives or if there’s a pushback on a date. We’re doing that when we receive the notification. That helps clients know, too, “Okay, all my stuff is coming in or it’s not.” It’s another communication tool.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Are you guys utilizing the client portal too, the full thing? Are they able to log in and go look at that progress, or not?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yes.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Yep.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. What is your onboarding experience look like for your customer? Do you coach them through how to use this? This is an area that builders, I think we sell them really well on getting them to use it, but then they don’t think about the, “I have to then translate it over,” and we provide them resources. I’m curious for our listeners because this is very common, what’s your approach to getting your customers to use it?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

We send them a link to the training video.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You do? Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I mean, it’s older, but it works.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I feel like everybody’s pretty techie these days. But we also started doing a kickoff meeting.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, you did?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

We bring our team in and the clients. If they have any questions on Buildertrend, make sure they’re activated and then just talk about next steps because everyone likes to know what the next step is.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. I read a great line. I don’t recall, but essentially it’s like, “If you’re not filling their thoughts with your ideas, they’re filling them with theirs.” In construction, that’s a dangerous proposition when you’re trying to move things along. Right?

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

What other features? I’m curious, Daily Logs, huge unlock, were there other things that you later adopted? This is basically for me to be like, “See, get on Daily Logs earlier,” and anything else?

Matt Kronaizl:

I mean, To-Do’s grew with as our company grew, but again, going back to being organized and so forth, it’s really developed into not only just your normal, like, “Hey, I need to remind myself to get this done.” It’s been a lot of, we use it in two, what I consider very important ways. One is if a client emails us something specific that they’re looking for, but we’re not to that phase of the project, it’s almost like we’re converting that from an email into a to-do, so that and tagging it to, okay, they want to add lights in these locations when we get to the electrical walkthrough. But they might’ve told us three months earlier.

So that we, A, don’t have to remember that or don’t have to document it elsewhere, and then it’s just automatically in a checklist already when we go to do the walkthrough. Secondly, as we are constantly updating our template for To-Do’s just from a QAQC process.

We’re not perfect, construction’s not perfect and things come up, mistakes happen or problems come up that you’re like, “Okay, here’s something that we’ve never experienced before and here’s how we resolved it, and now it’s in the template,” so that it’s looked at on the next project just to make sure that we don’t make that mistake or that mistake doesn’t happen twice, whether or not we made it on purpose or not.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The templating thing is massive, and it lets you also try different things, too. When you go to your approach, you can easily copy the template. Next job, we had issues on this part of the schedule. Let’s extend it out, see if that addresses it, get some baseline and reporting on that.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

I think we have 150.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Templates?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

To-Do’s.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, oh my gosh. Dang.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah, for each job.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

But that’s the whole life cycle of the job, right?

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How long are your builds typically? Are you on the full custom two-year build situation?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

12 to 14 months.

Matt Kronaizl:

12 to 14, yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

12, 14 months?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. From start of construction. I mean, most projects from the time we meet the client are over two years for sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Are those your To-Do’s, Selections included all of it? Or are they more about just making sure that the core construction items are on there?

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah, mostly QAQC checks.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Timeline deadlines and so forth.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. Yep.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah, and then we have our internal template for Selections.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Got it. Yep. It’s all core connected, but it’s not necessarily going through there.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Every job has a folder structure also that we use.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Love that.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

For each, that we just copy and start over. All the information is always in the same place.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. That’s impressive. Did you guys work with us to develop any of that or is that all just on your own accord?

Matt Kronaizl:

No. Yeah, it’s pretty much been on our own.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Just on our own.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, that’s really impressive. I mean, that’s the things that we preach that we’ve learned from our builders that we then take to other builders and there is that gap. I don’t know what your guys’ perspective is on the industry. I was just talking to customers that are here for BTU about how they just don’t know. They don’t talk to other construction owners. It’s lonely. A lot of people do figure it out, but it’s interesting because I like to hear, would it have been helpful to be able to talk to another builder to get that or did you use us to help facilitate that? But kudos to you guys.

Matt Kronaizl:

Yeah. It’s just making the time to make it happen.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

Because construction’s cake. It’s always a back burner project.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You know?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah, just like HGTV.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. It just happens. You just pick, and it just no problems.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Just happened in a couple of hours.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Really. Cool. Well, we’re right at time. You guys got to get out of here. You got a meeting to get to, but thank you so much for joining us on “The Building Code.” It’s a lot of fun to have you here in the studio and extend an invitation to come back anytime.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Thank you. Yeah.

Matt Kronaizl:

We love coming to the office. We love coming to see you, the classes here and it’s just great to have you guys local. It’s kind of fun.

Tamarah Kronaizl:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Everybody, move to Omaha. Get out here. Then you can have us whenever you want, right?

Tamarah Kronaizl:

That’s right.

Matt Kronaizl:

Right.

Zach Wojtowicz:

All right. Thank you everybody for listening today on “The Building Code.” Join us. Remember to always like, comment, subscribe. Check us out on all social media platforms. Don’t forget to tell your friends about “The Building Code,” and we’ll see you next time.

Tamarah Kronaizl

Tamarah Kronaizl | Sierra Homes


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