Watched a framing crew go from chaos to clockwork in 6 months

Back in March I walked a site in Denver where the framing crew looked like they’d never met each other. Banged knees, dropped a wall, took 4 hours to stand a simple gable end. Yesterday I walked the same crew on their third house together and they had a 2,400 square footer framed and sheathed by 2pm. Same GC, same foreman, just took half a year of grinding to figure out who does what. Has anyone else seen a crew totally flip like that once the rhythm clicked?

2 comments

2 Comments

sethb453d ago

Happens all the time, really. It's amazing how much a crew's communication changes once they figure out each other's little quirks (you know, like who grabs the nail gun first or who can read the plans without squinting). I've seen it where a crew that used to need constant direction from the foreman starts calling out the next step before he even opens his mouth. That's when you know they've stopped being a bunch of guys and started being a real team, the kind that can hit a target square footage by lunch without breaking a sweat.

christopher_craig2d ago

Oh man, yeah that shift is wild to watch. Saw a crew do the same thing on a townhome project last year. First couple weeks they were tripping over each other and missing nail lines. By month four they were moving like a pit crew, barely even talked just grunted and pointed and the walls were up.