Scope of Work We do a full range of improvement projects, primarily on single-family homes and, occasionally, in condominiums and apartments. Typical jobs include kitchen and bathroom renovations, attic and basement conversions, additions, decks and porches, whole-house renovations, and landscaping. More and more we are called upon to do significant energy upgrades in houses-sophisticated insulation, air-sealing, and lighting upgrades-work which we find particularly important.

Guildmaster Award Winner 2007 Guildmaster
2008 Guildmaster With Distinction
2009 Guildmaster
2010 Guildmaster With Distinction
2011 Guildmaster

Affiliations GuildQuality

Guildmaster Q&A

Company History

After a wide range of carpentry jobs interrupted by the occasional year of college, I founded Byggmeister (Scandinavian for "master builder") in 1983. From the beginning the company has focused on architect-designed residential renovations in and around Boston. We have always placed a high priority on cultivating two things: easy, friendly relations with our clients, and a talented and diverse crew. After year of gradual evolution toward the concept, in 2000 Byggmeister started offering design-build services, and within two years we were both designing and building 90 percent of our projects.

Scope of Work

We do a full range of improvement projects, primarily on single-family homes and, occasionally, in condominiums and apartments. Typical jobs include kitchen and bathroom renovations, attic and basement conversions, additions, decks and porches, whole-house renovations, and landscaping. More and more we are called upon to do significant energy upgrades in houses-sophisticated insulation, air-sealing, and lighting upgrades-work which we find particularly important.

Typical Workload

At any given time we'll be running two larger projects and two or three smaller projects. We assign a lead carpenter or project manager to each job to give it undivided attention from start to finish.

Team Makeup

Our office staff includes an estimator, an office manager, and a part-time marketing director. Our field staff includes a production manager, two project managers, four lead carpenters, five carpenters, and an apprentice carpenter. We also have an in-house mason and tile-setter.

Personal

I try to be very active in the community. I'm a current board member and past president of the Newton Historical Society; I chair the Strategic Planning committee for that organization. I'm on the board of the Green Decade Coalition/Newton and serve as the chair of their Kyoto Committee, leading an effort to improve the effectiveness of residential insulation work done through utility rebate programs. I'm also a former board member of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. Finally, I serve on the Board of Overseers of the Boston Chamber Music Society.

More than 90% of your clients would recommend your firm to a friend - this qualifies you as a GQ Guildmaster. How do you earn such high praise from your customers?

I think it's primarily because of our accountability. The way we approach design-build, if anything goes wrong at any point the client has exactly one person to point a finger at-and that's me. It may sound masochistic, but I like it-I like the absolute clarity. And I think our clients appreciate that our accountability holds over time: We have a very well developed program of revisiting past jobs at regular intervals to see if anything needs fixing or touching up. It helps us know what works over time and what doesn't-it's part of our process of continuous improvement.

Client Profile

Most of our clients are two-professional couples living in a single-family home or a condominium in and around the Boston area. They typically expect to stay in the house for the next several years-very few of our clients expect to have us do the work and then sell the house. Generally, they'd rather focus on quality instead of quantity. In other words, instead of a mediocre 1000-square foot addition, our clients would prefer a well-designed and well-built 500-square foot addition. For the most part, our new clients know more than one person for whom we have already completed a project (or several projects), and as a result they're looking to us to do their work rather than to just be one of several contractors to bid their work.

Approach to Working With Clients

We try to establish clear, mutually beneficial ground rules and then hold ourselves and our clients to those rules throughout the process. Some of them include: We won't start a project until we're ready to finish it; we won't do anything illegal; we will treat your house, family, pets, and neighbors with great respect; a priority will always be to reduce the overall energy consumption of your house no matter what the project is.

Ongoing Staff Training and Development

The best employee motivation is to provide a clear path for professional and personal development. We want our employees to grow as individuals and as part of a team-to have constant opportunities to learn, to challenge themselves, and to make a difference not only to our current clients but to future generations. To that end, we provide frequent training opportunities-jobsite training, conferences, books and magazine subscriptions, and presentation of case studies at company meetings; we even bring in guest speakers for full-day workshops.

What should clients bring to the table and contribute during the construction process?  What can they do to help make the relationship a success?

Clients should bring a sense of humor and perspective to the process. We are able to do our best work for clients who give us a strong commitment from the very start. The earlier you bring us in on your project, the more help we can offer in the design and conceptual stages. That means we can help head off problems down the road. Despite this compelling logic, we recognize that no matter how much clients talk to us and read about us beforehand, their decision to hire us - their commitment - is still a leap of faith.

How do you market your company?

Our biggest marketing source is our clients. Having a satisfied client recommend you to other potential clients is the best type of marketing, so we put our primary efforts into client satisfaction. We reinforce this by having an interesting and educational website, a quarterly newsletter, advertising, and we participate in (and win) industry design competitions.

What are the biggest challenges facing companies like yours in the building industry?

Helping clients understand the long-term value we provide. What we offer is more a service as a product, and the problem with selling services is that the true value of the service is not really understood until after the service has been delivered. We charge more than many companies, but the extra money all goes into the project. Until you've worked with us, you can't be sure that it's worth it. Communicating to you that it is worth it is the main challenge we face.

What's next for your company

We want to continue to push ourselves, our subcontractors, and our clients to take the houses we work on to higher and higher levels of performance without sacrificing beauty or ease of maintenance. The ultimate goal is zero net energy-a house that produces as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year. It's a long way away for us, but it's something we're keeping our eye on.