How MarkSystems helped French Brothers grow their business

Scaling up your construction business is a big challenge. But having a system that can keep up with your growth is crucial. In this interview with Kevin Jewell, president of French Brothers, we discuss the changes they have made to their business and how MarkSystems has helped. French Brothers have been using MarkSystems for over a decade and in that time, they have quadrupled the number of homes they build, going from 50 to 200 homes. During that time, they have seen variances go from 6% to 0.5% and build cycle times greater than 180 days drop to less than 95. Managing this growth required a system that could grow with them.

ECI: When would you say that it was a pivotal moment the company changed?

Kevin Jewell (KJ): When we adopted MarkSystems, we did 45-50 closings. And over time, you get comfortable with how you’re using your system. But as we built 100-150 homes, we watched the variances grow. We created shortcuts to manage the system to handle the growth, but it wasn’t working. We thought it might have been the system, but it was how we ran our business. Change was necessary for evolution.

Two moments caused us to rethink how we were doing things. The first was the MarkSystems Audit. Brad Haubert, Senior Consultant for MarkSystems reviewed our processes and systems and gave us a long report highlighting areas where we weren’t using MarkSystems efficiently. The second was when we applied for NHQ Gold but only got Silver. Based on reports and feedback from these two reviews, we realized that our processes needed to change.

We were still managing the business like a small New Mexico builder. We realized we didn’t have the infrastructure to manage the number of homes we were building, so we went to work. We made some significant changes to the company and focused on three key areas: infrastructure capability, growth of our people, and processes.

In the last two years, we’ve hired two additional members to our team – a business analyst who manages our technology and a trainer focused on training and cultural development. We have even set up a builder certification program, a four-month program graded with metrics.

ECI: What are some of the results you’ve seen from these changes?

KJ: As a result of all this work, we went from a 190-day cycle rate to 93. We went from not believing we could build a home under 150 days to getting upset when we go over 100. We have 15 fewer people on the team, but we’re turning homes faster, and variance rates are lower. Builders manage five to seven more homes for a build cycle than before.

ECI: What was one of the key process changes that was made to achieve these results?

KJ: OKRs and milestone KPIs. We broke up the components of building a home into critical steps so we could focus on the specific area of building a home that’s creating the lag or delay.

As part of our technology stack, we use Power BI to monitor the KPIs. We’ve conditionally formatted whether we have hit a KPI so we can if we’re tracking slower than we’d like to. The visualization in reports lets us identify issues very quickly. And then we can drill down into specific areas of the build to see what days we’re losing and in what specific part of the home. No one needs to run a report. The report automatically displays the data.

MarkSystems supplies all the budget and schedule data we use to drive the information in these reports. As the builder changes the schedule in MarkSystems, the data is pulled into the Power BI reports to see daily changes on the schedule instead of waiting until after the home is built.

KPIs are meaningless if you don’t hold people accountable. The KPIs are the subsets of the OKRs and give you the micro-level view of performance instead. Using KPIs lets us focus on solving the actual problem. Data takes the emotion out of it. The team can see how the schedule is tied to how much we’re paying, so they understand why it is not just for the builder. As a result, they are getting more precise with it. Establishing OKRs and KPIs would make an appreciable difference.

Hear more from Kevin Jewel, president of French Brothers, in the upcoming session of The Homebuilding Hot Seat (LIVE from IBS): “Can Your Supers "Really" Drive Down Variances?”