Building Green Building Green is a way of building that involves sustainable resources, such as straw or younger growth timber; recycling materials or eliminating excess waste from a jobsite; making things more efficient, such as making better use of your time on the jobsite or installing a windmill to take advantage of the wind's power to generate electricity for your home; and using materials that make your home more natural or healthier, such as mold resistant drywall or energy recovery ventilators (ERV's). All of these things can not only make your next project or jobsite cleaner and healthier, but can also make it more efficient and save you money even. Building Green is a way of life, not just a new building technique. | Efficient Building Making better use of your time and materials on the jobsite not only can get the project done faster and cheaper for the client, but it can make your company better and maybe even get you more money. Efficiency means simply to not waste what you have. Maybe you get a big snowstorm so you can't finish siding the building, why not take advantage of that time to work on the inside. Maybe you can start installing the mechanicals or electric or plumbing or maybe flooring. By making a use of the time you have to get more work done, not only are you helping out the client, but you will also be helping out yourself. The sooner you can get done, the sooner you maybe able to start a new project or devote more time to one you already have. Many people do not take advantage of this time, they look at as a loss of time and money, but it doesn't have to be. Secondly, schedule your projects better, make sure that the subcontractors aren't tripping over each other on the schedule and that you have time set aside to get the entire project finished, before the client needs to have it done. Also make sure your schedule is flexible enough that it will allow for delays or unforeseen setbacks in the construction, don't make it so tight that if you don't get a material shipment on time, that it slows everything down or completely shutsdown the construction site. Always make sure you are doing something that can be done to keep the jobsite moving, otherwise you can end up with a lot of extra headaches that don't need to occur. |