The Team Room
The people side of every stage: chat tied to the exact record, everybody able to report everybody, a role for every person, and training that runs on your own screens.
The operating system for post-frame and barndominium builders.
Instead of: A group text that links to nothing, problems with people raised only when somebody finally snaps, and new hires trained by following someone around for a week.
Talk about the job on the job, not in a group text
Every project gets its own chat, with the people on the job in it — six on the Hostetler 40×60 shop. Dale Yoder asks whether to frame now for a second overhead door on the east wall. The answer is one line: yes, it's written up — and a slash links the change order itself, CO-3, extra overhead door, $4,460, awaiting the customer, which anyone reading opens in one click. Yesterday's note about the truss delivery links the trusses-set stage the same way. One system for the whole post-frame business means the office, the sales team and the crews finally talk in the same room, and nobody feels left out of the loop.
A group text links to nothing, so every message about a change order is followed by somebody asking which one.
Everybody can report everybody — and praise counts too
Every crew member and crew leader has Report someone on the crew app. Pick who, grouped the way people work — your crew, the office and managers, the other crews, each with a role beside the name. Pick why from nine reasons: late, unsafe, had to redo, poor attitude… and good work. Say what happened — Wes Miller, late, the fourth time this month he's rolled in after 7:30 — and send it to the office. The office reports from Home with the same reasons. Only admins and project managers read reports, and nobody ever sees one about themselves. People who feel heard stay, and good work that gets noticed gets repeated.
When only managers can report, the problem a crew member sees every day reaches the office when somebody quits.
Set somebody up the day you hire them
Add the new hire before they ever log in — name, work email, mobile, address and role — and they can have a phone number, a territory or a crew on day one. Their first sign-in greets them in the words of their job, and Getting set up on Home walks them through their role's steps, the most important first. The Academy teaches on your own screens. A new hire who's useful in the first week feels it, and stays.
A new hire who exists nowhere until he clicks an email link spends his first week waiting.
A role decides what each person sees — a worker's app is three things
Admin, sales rep, project manager, crew leader, worker — each role carries its own abilities: which screens they see, what they can change, whether they see money documents, what they can do in the field. A worker gets the dashboard, the schedule and his own work: the jobs he could be on and the stage each is at — the Wenger shop in framing, the Stoltzfus storage at site prep. No contacts, no estimates, no invoices, no other crew's week. Everyone gets the tools for his job and nothing in the way of it, and a simple screen is one a man actually uses.
One login for everybody means everybody sees everything, including what the job sold for.
In the field, you decide who ticks the checklist
Let only crew leaders mark work complete, and everyone else still logs hours, adds photos and reports a hold-up — but sees no checklist. Or let anyone on the crew tick off checkpoints on the job they're clocked into. One switch, set the way you run your crews. Leaders keep the responsibility that makes them leaders, or the whole crew shares the credit.
A rule about who signs off a stage that lives only in your head gets broken on the first busy day.
Each person hears what's his to hear
Alerts follow the roles: sales hears about new leads and estimates, the project manager hears that a stage is done, the crew lead and the worker hear neither. Anyone put on a job hears about that job whether his role box is ticked or not. A man can quiet his own phone, but he can't switch on what his role was never given. Nobody drowns in alerts that aren't theirs, so they read the ones that are.
When every alert goes to everybody, everybody learns to ignore them — including the one that mattered.
Put your whole team
in one room.
The people side of every stage: chat tied to the exact record, everybody able to report everybody, a role for every person, and training that runs on your own screens. Twenty minutes, on one of your real structures — and the link we build is yours to keep whether or not you go any further.
