When I’m frustrated by something, I’ll tend to keep thinking about it, like a problem to be solved. If I can figure out why I’m so irritated, then maybe I can learn from it (rather than only complain about it). Fictional Stories and Real-Life Budgets In the past,...

Good people show up. They work hard. They care. Yet output still stalls, quality still slips, due dates still move, and managers still spend too much of their day answering questions, expediting work, and solving the same problems again and again. Because when work is unclear, effort gets...

Candidates and employers keep asking me the same question — what am I seeing in hiring trends for 2026? The honest answer is “it’s complicated.” The more honest answer is that I don’t think the market has made up its mind yet. It’s April and, under normal...

My March article, “Prevent Scope Creep Becoming ‘Just the Way We Do Things’,” talks about drawing clearer boundaries so extra work doesn’t quietly erode margins, burn out designers, and reset customer expectations. While all of that matters, it would be unrealistic...

Board foot has been used for decades in component manufacturing, and it still serves its purpose for sales reporting, legacy KPIs, and corporate roll ups. There is no need to abandon it. But for scheduling, pricing, and determining how much work a plant can actually handle, board foot alone will...

In the middle of the largest residential construction show in the world, wedged between estimating software and the kitchen and bath aisle, our small booth was focused on one question: where do structural components truly fit in the future of homebuilding? The International Builders Show...

In off-site manufacturing, change is inevitable. What is not inevitable is losing money because of it. The change order is not red tape. It is protection. It protects the company, the client, the project schedule, and even the salesperson who worked hard to land the job. Consider how a...

My December article, “What Does Scope Creep Look Like in Truss Design?,” talks about extra trusses quietly added, parapets suddenly included, and engineering tasks drifting onto your desk because someone else didn’t handle them. None of these start out as big asks. They usually...

In late January, news reports sounded the alarm for a massive winter storm across a large section of the US. Naturally, it brought panic buying of food, snow shovels, and ice melt, and many places confronted treacherous conditions. In the aftermath though, we can gain perspective on how our...

Most companies don’t have a performance problem. They have a flow problem. They have good people, decent equipment, and plenty of effort on the floor, but the numbers that matter most still refuse to move. Output stays flat, lead times stretch, overtime becomes the norm, customers feel...