GuildQuality

We are thrilled to sponsor this year’s Replacement Contractor Executive Conference powered by Replacement Contractor. This year’s conference is being held February 23–24, 2012 in Las Vegas.

In addition to hearing from industry experts and learning from other professional contractors from around the country, this year’s conference will feature the Replacement Contractor Service Excellence Awards Dinner conducted by GuildQuality and sponsored by James Hardie.

All replacement contractors who register for the conference before December 30, 2011 are eligible for the Replacement Contractor Service Excellence Awards. As a Guildmember, you are automatically eligible for the awards with your registration prior to December 30, 2011. Those companies ranking highest will be presented with the Service Excellence Award.

Registration for the conference is $495 for Guildmembers—a significant savings off the $695 regular registration rate. Click here to register, and be sure to check “Sponsor Guest” as your registration type.

We look forward to seeing you in Las Vegas!

The Home Builders Association of Illinois held its Installation and Awards Banquet this week in which it chose Scott Sevon, GMR, GMB, CGP, CGR, CAPS, partner with MAW Chicago as Remodeler of the Year with HBAI. Sevon is also on the advisory board with Qualified Remodeler magazine.

“I feel very grateful to be voted the best in the state! Although this award singled me out, it is our firm’s award. MAW Chicago, our team of employees and trade partners make this award possible,” he says. “As my partner, Mike Nagel, CGR,CAPS, and I believe, we try to give back to this great industry. We each stay involved at the local, state and national levels of our HBAs. This gives us an edge over most in our industry because we are current on rules, regulations, requirements and the pulse of our industry.” Read more here.

MAW Chicago, a construction company specializing in residential and commercial interior and exterior design and renovation has been a GuildQuality member since June 2011. Congratulations Scott and MAW team!

GuildQuality member, LEFKO Renovations, earned a mention in the December issue of Fortune! Owner, David Lefkovits shares his secret to successful marketing in the latest Fortune Venture column.

LEFKO Renovations is a family owned residential renovation and remodeling company and a sister company of the LEFKO Group, a real estate development, general contracting and investments company co-founded by David.

In addition to David’s leadership at LEFKO, he is also a partner of Custom Building Group, a builder of luxury homes in Metro Atlanta. Congratulations David and LEFKO team!

Michael Nagel, partner of MAW Chicago LLC, was named the 2011 National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Remodeler of the Year this past November. Due to his NAHB involvement, superior business management skills and outstanding contributions to the remodeling industry, Nagel received top honors. Read more on Michael Nagel and his NAHB win here.

MAW Chicago LLC has been a GuildQuality member since June 2011. Congratulations Michael and MAW team!

Nagel receives his Remodeler of the Year award from (left to right) Chris Dana, Pella Corp.; Rob Heselbarth, Qualified Remodeler; and Bob Peterson, CGR, CAPS, CGP, NAHBR chair, during the NAHB.

GuildQuality partner, James Hardie, was contacted by the Discovery Channel Network to participate in a segment for their show, “How It’s Made” which airs nationally on the Science Channel. Check out their segment here!

GuildQuality member 1-800-HANSONS was recently named National Contractor of the Year by Replacement Contractor Magazine, a publication that recognizes the top window, siding and roofing contractors in the United States.

“We work very hard to provide our customers with the best products and service before and after the sale. In this industry it’s all about trust and we work very hard at earning and keeping the trust of our clients,” states owner and President Brian Elias.

Congratulations 1-800-HANSONS!

Forbes just picked up a story about I’On that was published by MarketUrbanism a few years ago. Real estate development is difficult, and politics make it more so. An excerpt from the original MarketUrbanism post:

It is important to recognize that our society has politicized property rights and democratized land use to the point that most re-zonings now involve a political campaign. Even with great built examples such as the historic area of Charleston and the Old Village of Mt. Pleasant, one should not make the naïve mistake of assuming that citizens or their elected leaders will understand the concept after hearing a lecture or reading a few articles on Traditional Neighborhood Development. Some may take years to understand the concept, while others may never understand it. And there are some who feel that accepting the design principles of TND involves an admission that what has been built over the last 50 years was a mistake. They may be unable or unwilling to make such an admission. Also, one should not assume that if a politician or appointed board member likes a project or thinks it is “the right thing to do” they will necessarily support it in a public forum. Few are those who possess the political will or guts to stand up to an angry room full of NIMBYs, or a well-connected citizen.

It is extraordinarily difficult to win such a political campaign in most areas of the country for several reasons: (1) Prior to World War II people were excited about growth. Their expectations were that what was built would be beautiful and contribute to their quality of life. However, the overall quality of the built environment of the last 50 years has been poor. This makes people distrustful of anything new, and gives rise to a legitimate belief that anything new will, by association with most of what has been built over the last 50 years, will necessarily be bad; (2) the private/exclusive mindset embodied in the suburban mentality (which has spread to many urban areas) leads people to believe that any more development will degrade their privacy and exclusivity; and (3) it is in the best short-term economic interests of existing property owners because limiting supply of new homes, puts upward pressure on existing home prices.

I’ve mentioned I’On a few times in our own blog. Visit our website here. Also, this Forbes post may help to explain why I occasionally rant about how the political and regulatory process is destroying the building profession.

December 7 Update: Steve Kendrick just pointed out to me that the house in the background is an I’On custom home built by Mount Pleasant builder & remodeler, and long-time Guildmember, Structures Building Company!

Check out these Guildmember logos on work vehicles. Above is Dexter Builders of Dexter, MI. Below is Construction Ahead of Doraville, GA.

Are you promoting your membership in our community of quality? We’d love to see how — send us a picture, and we’ll share it here!

P.S. You can find print-quality versions of the Guildmember logo in the marketing section of your account.

John DeShazo of FBN Construction passed away last week. Godspeed, John.

GuildQuality recently partnered with improveit! 360, a web-based CRM solution used by a growing number of our members. This alliance was formed to make it easier for remodelers and replacement contractors to quickly and effortlessly compile information needed to survey their customers.

improveit! 360 automates the process of assembling the information required by GuildQuality to distribute surveys to customers, saving time and preventing duplicate efforts. Remodelers can schedule this process to automatically run at a specific time of day and be sent directly to GuildQuality for survey execution.

Results are processed faster so home improvement companies can correct service issues discovered through customer feedback and maintain a positive online reputation.

Southwest Exteriors was recognized today as one of Window & Door Magazine’s 2011 Dealers of the Year.  The full story can be found here.

A GuildQuality member since 2006, Southwest Exteriors has achieved a 98% recommendation rate and an 84% response rate to surveys.  We survey all of Southwest’s clients and sales prospects, and Scott Barr (owner) personally reads the feedback from every client.  As a result of this commitment to quality, Southwest enjoys one of the industry’s highest referral rates.

I think Geoff said it well when interviewed for the feature story, “The world would be a much better place if every business operated like Southwest Exteriors.”  Congratulations to Scott and the Southwest Exteriors team!

Check out Professional Remodeler’s 2011 40 under 40. You’ll see Jeremy Jackson & Brandon LeRoy of Jackson & LeRoy, plus more than two dozen additional Guildmembers. You’ll also find some wonderful personal profiles for each entrepreneur.

Daily5Remodel is running a contest. Remodelers can submit projects on homes older than 50 years; readers vote on their favorite and the remodeler of the most popular project receives an iPad. At least half the remodelers who submitted projects are GuildQuality members, so it may be inappropriate for me to play favorites, but I’m going to anyway.

Here are my two reasons why you should vote for Classic Remodeling’s King Street Renovation in Charleston:

1) I know Classic Remodeling’s founder, Bob Fleming. He and I go way back. We served on the Charleston HBA’s board together, and his company was among the very first companies to join GuildQuality. I’m pretty sure that Classic Remodeling was the very first to ever actually pay us anything. So when I say “I know Bob,” I mean I really know him. Not only does he make a mean Mojito (really mean), but Bob is a true technologist. He does whatever he can to pull technology into his business. He was using his laptop to show off pictures of work before most people had email addresses. If anyone can take that iPad prize and use it to help people envision their home’s potential, it’s Bob Fleming.

2) By coincidence, I lived next door to this house when I was in my early twenties (to the immediate right of the picture). The home I lived in had a history of it’s own — built in 1721, it was (and is) the oldest wooden structure that’s still standing in Charleston. It looks it, too! My apartment opened right onto the sidewalk, which is precisely where the carriage tours stopped 50 times a day to give the tourists an opportunity to marvel at the home next door (Bob’s work, pictured above). While they marveled, the tour guides shared a story: My next-door neighbor’s home was a labor of love by one of Charleston’s most talented builders. While talented, he was notoriously awkward and shy, and he’d fallen in love with a beautiful woman from New Orleans. After much coaxing, the woman reluctantly agreed to marry him on the condition that he built her the home of her dreams. He set right to work, and several years later, when he wrote to inform her of it’s completion and ask for her hand, her family wrote back to tell him that he’d missed his chance. She’d married a man named P.T. Barnum several months earlier. The builder never found another love, and upon his death, he left the house to the church. The only way to salvage the tragedy of this house is to help Bob win an iPad.

So by voting for Classic Remodeling you’ll be simultaneously helping people envision the home of their dreams, while bringing a happy ending to a tragic story of lost love.

Mark Newman of Remodeling just published an excellent piece describing some best practices from nine winners of Remodeling and Replacement’s Service Excellence Award (powered by GuildQuality).

Congratulations to GuildQuality member, Seabrook Land Company.  They were awarded a Gold Nugget Award for Residential Project of the Year at last month’s PCBC event in San Francisco.  Entries came from 14 Western states.

From the PCBC website – the awards “recognize those who improve our communities through exceptional concepts in design, planning and development.  The Gold Nugget Awards honor creative achievements in architectural design and land use planning for residential, commercial and industrial projects.”

To view the full list of winners, click here.  Seabrook won awards in multiple categories, including the “Ultimate Beach House” pictured here.