Keeping everyone on the same page

CCS Influencer Will Lorenz says weekly meetings, are very important in combination with active communication.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Will Lorenz of General Coatings. You can read the interview below, listen to the podcast or watch the recording.

Dani Sheehan: Hi, I'm Dani Sheehan with The Coffee Shops and I am here this month with Will Lorenz. Welcome, Will. Thanks for joining us for our August influencer response.

Will Lorenz: Thank you, Dani. I'm looking forward to it. Another exciting time with CoatingsCoffeeShop, talking about coatings and roofing materials.

Dani Sheehan: Yeah, absolutely. So the question this month is how can project stakeholders collaborate effectively with all parties, including manufacturing, distribution and other trades to reduce miscommunication and ensure seamless project execution?

Will Lorenz: So I think there are a number of tools out there, but it's really how you use the tool. And what I find is it's good in the beginning to have everybody gather as to what's the goals of it, the timing and what are each person's role in this. What happens many times is someone's left out. And the expectation is that five vendors or five manufacturers know what's going on and someone else is not fully aware of it. And then, you know, many times with projects, they're involving consultants and they get on the roof and they're looking at things and they have updates. And many times those updates don't get processed well or efficiently so that everybody knows that there's a change. So, you know, weekly meetings, I think are very important, but also sending out prompt changes and updates is really important.

We've been involved with some projects down in San Diego and the general contractor really has managed the project really well. They have the ability to send out an update. You know, we did a roof observation on this and you know, we need to do this change, this change. And so everybody's aware of it. And so it's worked out well, but you know, conversely, I've been on projects where the goals are really the end rather than in the middle. And so how you get there is kind of open and then there's a lot of miscommunication. So I think, you know, whether you start off with a good beginning meeting and then weekly updates and then, you know, sending out an update whenever there's a change. And usually it's a third party who's got some influence into the project that needs to have an important update.

Dani Sheehan: Yeah, absolutely. I think the key here is over communication, right? Any change, no matter how small you might think it is, can have drastic impacts on, you know, maybe the timeline or other trades that are involved. And so really making sure that nothing goes unsaid.

Will Lorenz: That's true and you know what we've also found is when it goes awry and people are curious then you just need to actually get on site and look at the project. Walk it with everybody involved and say yes you agree this skylight needs to have this adjustment as far as you know how we're going to detail it and you know those are the things that are critical. There's so much wasted time because people aren't available or updates aren't sent out so people are operating off of old information and getting timely information out to people allows them to make adjustments for deliveries or for what's the schedule, what's changed in the weather. Those are all big factors many times with roofing products.