Checking Boxes and Solving Problems.
When you arrive at a jobsite for an installation or service call, what's the first thing that should be running through your mind?
Whether you’ve been in the trade for two months or twenty years, the mindset should always be the same: "how do I solve this problem", essentially how do you plan to accomplish the job at hand and what hurdles may stand in your way of doing so.
Many technicians rely on a checklist, and for good reason. A checklist is an invaluable tool for reviewing your approach, keeping your steps consistent, and ensuring every job meets you and your company's standards.
However, a checklist should only be the starting point!
While checklists offer a solid foundation, they are built for perfect, standard conditions. This leads to checklists becoming too rigid for the day to day technician. The reality of working as a garage door technician is rarely standard. Between odd building construction, tight spaces, unique customer requests, and unexpected structural conflicts, site complications happen far more often than most people expect.
There are a wealth of stories I have heard from technicians new and old about unconventional, complex or outright weird jobs they have had to complete where their checklists failed.
This is where your Unique Job Plan comes into play.
What is a Unique Job Plan?
While it may sound like an extensive process, a unique job plan is actually very simple and direct. All a unique job plan entails is taking extra time to assess what challenges there may be with the job and forming a strategy to handle these issues while you complete the job.
While a checklist tells you what needs to be done in what order, a job plan maps out how you will handle the specific challenges of this job successfully.
In essence a job plan is simply taking a moment to identify what you need to consider uniquely for this job prior to starting to run down the checklist. This should prevent you from running into bottlenecks and dead ends over the course of your installation, repair, teardown or service.
Note: Creating a job plan should not take you long and it should not delay your job by much.
Conquering Complex Jobs
For many technicians, going to a jobsite you know will be complex or involved throughout the install can be daunting. For many this is where the checklist comes to play. It acts as an easy reference, a map, to ensure you don't get lost or bogged down in the new challenges. But a map can only get you so far, eventually you'll have to face the perils ahead. That is where your plan arrives to save the day!
Your checklist will keep you consistent, on point and will work as a reference point for all that needs to be done. However this checklist was constructed with standard jobsite conditions in mind and are usually only prepared to accommodate the most common and expected problems on the job. The checklist may cause you to hit a wall during unusual or unconventional installs resulting in you needing to backpedal, adding more work to your plate and more time to the job. This can result in lots of wasted time, repetitive work and potentially unsafe resulting conditions.
Don't forget.... time is money!
This is where your job plan surges ahead and keeps you moving. By utilizing a small amount of time prior to any work being done you save yourself potential hours working on complex jobs. You will identify quirks, oddities and problems early, allowing you to plan ahead and not slow down. When the problems and obstacles are accounted for early, the job becomes a racetrack instead of an obstacle course.
Planning for the Normal Jobs
What about the straightforward, run-of-the-mill jobs? Spending two minutes on a plan is still the cheapest insurance policy you can buy.
Every job, no matter how direct and easy they may appear, hides unknowns that can be easily handled by implementing a plan early. A quick pre-job walkthrough paired with a few minutes of planning will ensure all your bases are covered and can save you time down the road.
By creating a plan, and still using your checklist, you can be sure you are doing the job right and that you are prepared for what is to come as you move through the phases of your work. A few minutes will save you hours when things go wrong or when the unexpected happens.
By combining a quick Unique Job Plan with your trusted checklist, you guarantee the job gets done right, safely, and efficiently every single time. Next time you park at a site, take three minutes to look ahead, your future self will thank you.
