Masonry Magazine October 2001 Page. 21
April 2001 issue of MASONRY, "Quality Masonry Cleaning: The 3 Keys" provides information regarding the expectations of the customers and the need to control installation and final cleaning procedures. These are just two examples of issues that end up important to the building owners and developers. There needs to be ongoing dialogue with both owners and developers to routinely discover their changing needs and requirements and to assure that our industry's changes are properly adapted to satisfy the needs and requirements of the customers.
KNOWLEDGEABLE REPRESENTATIVES
The key customers are depending on the architectural and engineering firms to get advice on building material selection. Why? Because, no one, other than the architect, is talking to the ultimate customers. Our industry has done an excellent job at developing and implementing training programs to raise the knowledge level of sales professionals. Major advancements have been made with an increased number of quality calls on architectural firms and technical presentations in their offices. Unfortunately, we then depend on the architect to communicate our messages to the owners.
The architects tend to select masonry due to design flexibility, appearance, and economics. The customer is not hearing about the all the other attributes of masonry construction. Increased safety, structural integrity, low maintenance, energy efficiency, durability, sound absorption and sound penetration resistance, fire protection, security, insurance savings, etc. The customers rarely get the opportunity to understand the costs of various wall systems. Even if a masonry product representative calls on a key account, their questions about constructability and costs of construction can rarely be answered without involvement from a mason contractor.
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
The masonry industry has come a long way from where it was twenty years ago. However, we haven't done a good job of communicating the industry changes and advancements to our ultimate customers.
Product Quality - Product producers need to communicate advancements in products and processes to the ultimate consumer both directly and through the architects and mason contractors.
Product Availability - Key regional and national customers need to be elevated in priority for obtaining product quickly. While these might not always be preferred projects, especially with regard to financial aspects, they are huge consumers of masonry products on the regional and national level. Timeliness of enclosure completion, a key consideration for most key accounts, is dependent on both product availability and quality installation.
Economics Key accounts will continue to investigate alternative construction systems based on economics. When comparisons are limited to aesthetics, many other systems can be considered as attractive alternatives to masonry. The attributes of masonry construction need to be better communicated with the ultimate customer.
Quality of Workmanship - There is a need to elevate the minimum standards of quality for masonry construction. While this will raise the price of masonry, it should raise prices across the board. Owners and their agents must demand compliance to the minimum standards. While one approach to achieve improved quality might be through registrations, licenses, or certification programs, key accounts would be satisfied with an effective referral service. Product producers are naturally reluctant to recommend one contractor rather than another of their immediate customers. However, image and industry websites showing projects in various categories of building and wall type that the ultimate customer, i.e. the project owner, could browse to view quality of workmanship, total project and masonry costs and contacts for architectural firms, general contractors, and masonry contractors. This is the type of information that key accounts are seeking.
Standardization of Units - While industry terminology has become more uniform, there are still many colloquialisms. This remains a challenge for the regional and national building owners and developers. More importantly there is a need to communicate the various approaches to similar performance for different areas of the country. It might be that normal weight, single-wythe fully-grouted masonry construction is required to fulfill project requirements in the Pacific Northwest, but there may be a variety of other wall systems to provide acceptable performance more affordably in other areas of the country. There is clearly a need amongst the key regional and national customers to discover the benefits of performance-based approaches to design and material selection rather than material properties only.
(more on next page)
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MASONRY OCTOBER, 2001 21