Part Two: The Turbulent 1980s
For CMs to prosper in the 1980s, after surviving the “double-bubble” of apartment building in the 1970s, required great tenacity and innovation. Projects grew in size and complexity. Developers gained momentum and began employing scheduling and project costing software. Tough timelines and “per square foot” costing standards were developed. CMs needed streamlining.
Trussway Paves the Way: Entering the 1980s, even as U.S. apartment construction ebbed, Houston’s rocketed to an amazing 42,000 units in 1982. In this market with only 2% of U.S. population, a full 15% of multi-family housing was being built. And Trussway was at its epicenter. Pre-built components became the key, and not just trusses. To further increase jobsite productivity, Trussway introduced the trussed rough opening, or TRO. This innovation enabled framers to jump start jobs; eliminating the delays while they did the “build-up”; cutting and assembling headers and jacks. A further savings arose from material optimization. On jobsites framers used longer, more costly lumber lengths, while Trussway was able to recycle short cut-offs. As a result, Houston framers readily “gave back” their labor and material savings, which netted Trussway another 25–30% increase in revenue on such projects.
To meet developers’ frantic schedules, Trussway also developed a key management tool, the ubiquitous Project Spreadsheet. This tool maximized flexibility in truss production by identifying quantities of identical trusses across an entire project. Site conditions nearly always changed the order in which buildings were erected. In the example herein, if the slab for Building 7 was suddenly poured out of the planned sequence, the truss plant was able to ship the trusses for Buildings 1, 4, or 12. In such “cookie cutter” garden style apartments, framers often stocked trusses by truss type in holding areas nearby, on future phases of construction when available. With this simple spreadsheet, the plant was also able to batch multiple buildings, minimizing setups, while filling available plant capacity.
After successfully supplying multiple apartment projects of various sizes, Trussway was able to develop “per square foot” metrics for floor, roof, and trussed rough openings. In the seller’s market of 1982, an astute truss salesman could bid a large project without opening the set of plans, literally “on the steering wheel of his truck.” Simply by reading the square footage on the plan cover sheet, and multiplying by appropriate metrics, he quickly priced the entire job and hand wrote figures on company letterhead, while retaining a carbon-copy. He then rubber-banded the quote to the set of plans and returned them to the developer, and his only worry became “how to deliver on time.”
But these heady days of truss sales nirvana were quickly eclipsed by increasing competition, more savvy buyers, and tightening markets. Developers began using sophisticated costing and scheduling tools. Imagine my shock in these early days of the personal computer when I encountered an early Apple McIntosh computer in a job trailer in Austin, Texas. The project superintendent asked me to call out the truss unit prices as he read me each truss mark. My concern heightened when I noticed, but could not discern on the Mac’s tiny display, a competitor’s bid prices adjacent to mine, on an Apple spreadsheet. The supervisor quickly extended and totaled my bid and advised me only that “I was competitive.” We only wrestled that 532 unit job from Trussway by quoting high grade 2x12’s instead of the glu-lams specified.
As the 1980s wore on, and oil prices collapsed from $34 to $10 per barrel, the Texas apartment business tanked and nearly disappeared. By 1987, we Texas CMs were left with few alternatives. Single family housing was mostly stick-framed, and the few wood-trussed commercial projects attracted multiple bids. Several of us trussers were compelled to leave Texas for still-thriving non-oil dependent markets. Yet only a very few hardy Texas CMs developed strategies that enabled them to survive until the present day.
[This author was VP of Truss & Component Company in San Antonio from 1983 until 1987]
Next Month:
Part Three: Survival Strategies in the 1980s