Customer Service – Know what to Build – Foremen

You Don’t Know What You’re Doing until You Know What the Customer Wants

I want to start with a hard sentence, and I want you to hear it the way I intend it. You do not know what you are doing, not yet, not fully, if you do not know what the customer wants with what you are building today. I am not saying you are not skilled. I am not saying you are not hardworking. I am saying that in construction, skill without customer clarity turns into guessing, and guessing turns into rework, conflict, and broken trust. If you don’t know what the owner, designer, engineer, end user, and inspector are expecting in that specific area, then you are installing based on habit and muscle memory, not customer service. And customer service is quality, whether we admit it or not.

This episode 102 message has been on my mind because I keep seeing the same pattern coast to coast. We push work. We “get it done.” We make assumptions. Then we act surprised when the inspector is upset or the owner says it’s not what they wanted. If you want to stabilize your jobsite, protect your crews, and create flow, you have to start with the end in mind. That is Lean thinking. That is what Elevate Construction teaches. That is what LeanTakt is supposed to enable when it is paired with quality at the source.

Good People Working Hard and Still Losing

One of the most frustrating feelings in the field is when you have enough manpower, enough materials, and enough hours, and yet the job still feels stuck. It shows up as areas falling behind, daily task forces, constant re-inspections, and crews burning energy on fixing yesterday instead of building today. It starts to feel like the project is fighting back. I have been in those meetings where everyone is looking at the schedule, the percent plan complete, the delays, and the manpower curves, and the conversation keeps circling, but nothing changes.

Here is what is usually happening underneath all that noise. The team is trying to buy speed with effort, but the system is not producing quality predictably. And when quality is not predictable, the inspector gets upset, the owner loses confidence, the trade partner loses momentum, and the general contractor spends the day managing emotion instead of managing flow. That is not a people problem. It is a system problem. It is a clarity problem. It is a training problem.

Building What We Always Build, Then Calling It a “Change”

Now let’s name the failure pattern, because if we do not name it, we cannot fix it. The failure pattern is that we install what we know how to install, not what the customer actually ordered. Then we try to force the customer to accept it. Then we argue about money. Then we spend months repairing relationships that should never have been damaged in the first place.

If you want to feel this in your bones, think about the simplest customer service moment in normal life. If I go to Cold Stone and order sweet cream mixed with butter pecan, caramel, and chocolate shavings, and they hand me chocolate ice cream, I am not paying. It does not matter that they “worked hard” to scoop it. It does not matter that it is still technically ice cream. I did not order that. And in construction, we do this all the time. We build a version of the product that the customer did not ask for, and then we get offended when they resist paying for it.

I have heard a similar analogy that always makes me smile because it is so obvious. If I go to a Ford dealership and order an F-350 with off-road tires, and the dealer tells me I live in the city so I “don’t need that” and tries to sell me an F-150 instead, I walk away. It is my money. It is my preference. It is my business what I want. In construction, we lecture owners in ways we could never get away with in any other customer service environment. We tell them they don’t need that finish. We tell them they don’t need that polish. We tell them they don’t need that level five. We act like we know their value system better than they do. And then we wonder why trust breaks.

This Happens When We Lack a Field-Ready Quality System

If this is hitting you hard, I want you to know I am not throwing rocks. I have been the field engineer who thought concrete was “just structure.” I have been the person who did not fully appreciate that exposed concrete, architectural ceilings, and polished slabs are not just structural decisions anymore. They are customer experience decisions. They are brand decisions. They are design decisions. If you don’t know the exposed areas and the finish expectations early, you cannot magically “patch” your way into excellence later. Patching is not a quality plan. Patching is evidence that we did not build it right the first time.

This is why I get passionate about it, because I believe most of the quality problems we experience are not because people do not care. They are because we did not give the field a clear target and a clear method to hit it. When a foreman is forced to guess, the crew pays the price. When the crew pays the price, safety pays the price. Rework is one of the most dangerous things we do in construction because it adds unplanned work in unplanned conditions with frustration, fatigue, and pressure. If we care about people, we build a system that prevents rework by honoring customer requirements at the source.

The Foreman Who Was Calm Because He Was Clear

I watched this show up in a meeting where we were discussing areas being behind. We had enough people. We had materials. We had the ability to do the work. Yet we were still losing time. The inspector was upset, and the trade partner was frustrated. Then one foreman spoke up, and he said something so simple that it should be written on the wall of every job trailer.

He said, “I don’t know what to say. I have a wonderful relationship with the inspector. All my guys know exactly what they do. I start my day in the morning. I have lists per worker of what I want them to do, how I want them to do it, and what the expectations are. I huddle with them and teach them exactly what I expect. And I know 100% it’s exactly what the municipal inspector wants every single time. So we don’t have any issues.”

That foreman was not lucky. He was not magical. He was running a system. He was doing customer service through quality. He was respecting the inspector’s requirements, the owner’s expectations, and his crew’s need for clarity. And when I asked, “Can we get every foreman doing that?” there was pushback. People have different ways, they said. They didn’t want to synchronize. And inside I thought, please. We can all see the system that works. Why are we so stubborn that we refuse to implement it?

To the foremen who are doing this, I want to say it clearly. You are my heroes. Your workers are my heroes. You are changing the industry one huddle at a time.

Pride Comes From Delivering What Was Ordered

Here is the part that hits deeper than checklists and meetings. People want to be proud of what they build. Workers want to go home feeling like they created something excellent. Foremen want to feel respected because they led a crew to do high-quality work. Superintendents want to feel calm because the site is stable. Owners want to feel confident that they are getting what they paid for.

That pride does not come from yelling harder. It does not come from working longer. It comes from building the product the customer ordered. It comes from knowing what “right” looks like and building it that way consistently. When we fail at that, the jobsite becomes a courtroom instead of a production system. We spend our days defending decisions instead of producing flow.

And that is why I say, if you don’t know what the customer wants, you don’t know what you are doing. Not because you are incompetent, but because your system is incomplete.

Voice of the Customer to Field Execution

Some people call it voice of the customer. Some call it customer needs. Some teams use conditions of satisfaction. I am not picky about the label. I am picky about the result. For every scope and every area, the team must identify what the customer, designer, engineer, end users, and inspectors expect. That expectation must become field-ready information that a foreman can teach and a crew can execute.

Sometimes this is done through conditions of satisfaction at the project level. Sometimes it is done through alignment conversations with the architect where we clarify exposed areas, alignments, and architectural priorities. On complex spaces like lobbies, strong teams create an area feature of work description, then translate it into an area feature of work board or visual so the craft knows exactly what matters and what “good” looks like.

When we do it by scope, we rely on features of work descriptions, feature of work boards, feature of work visuals, and checklists. This is not paperwork. This is customer service translated into production. A quality process typically includes pre-mobilization, the right submittals, a pre-construction meeting to onboard and orient the superintendent and foreman, a first-in-place mockup, and an initial inspection to confirm the foreman and crew are headed in the right direction.

If your crew is installing without a clear feature of work board or checklist that incorporates the conditions of satisfaction, the designer’s intent, the inspector’s expectations, the owner’s priorities, and the exposed components, then you are not building what the customer wants. You are building what you assume. That is why quality becomes inconsistent and why relationships become strained.

This is also why I believe our industry must evolve. In addition to RFIs, submittals, and normal contract items, these features of work visuals and checklists need to become required deliverables that are clear enough for the crew to use. The goal is not to create more paperwork. The goal is to create less confusion and less rework.

Here is what this looks like in the field when it is done with intention and respect, and this is where the small amount of bulleted structure can help you visualize the flow without turning this into a checklist. A foreman’s day becomes calmer when the system includes:

• A clear understanding of customer requirements for that day’s work, especially exposed areas, finishes, and alignment priorities.
• A feature of work board or visual that translates those requirements into installable expectations the crew can see and reference.
• A short daily teaching rhythm in the crew preparation huddle so the standard becomes shared understanding, not tribal knowledge.

Those are not extra steps. Those are the steps that prevent the “extra steps” of rework.

The 25-Minute Crew Preparation Huddle and Stop, Call, Wait

Now let’s get very practical, because this is where foremen win. If you are a foreman, you use your 25-minute crew preparation huddle to teach the expectations and protect your crew from guessing. You review the feature of work board. You review the checklist. You confirm what the inspector will look for. You confirm what the owner cares about. You make sure your lead people and sub-foremen can repeat it back. Then you turn it into installation.

The next day, you come back and ask, “Did we deviate? What did we learn? What needs to improve? What questions came up?” That is how standards get better. That is how the crew learns. That is how the system becomes stronger over time.

Then you connect it to pre-task planning. The best pre-task plans I have seen are visual, because construction is visual. One side focuses on safety with space to draw the plan. The other side focuses on quality with space to draw and answer questions. When the pre-task plan connects directly to the feature of work board, the crew is not guessing. They are executing a shared standard.

This is where the stop, call, and wait concept becomes a gift to the crew. If it smells funny, looks wrong, sounds wrong, feels wrong, anything is off, the worker stops, calls, and waits. The foreman comes, references the feature of work board, confirms any deviation, and resets the crew. If we taught that consistently, quality would be licked. I mean it. We would have it figured out because we would stop installing wrong work early instead of discovering it late.

And here is why this connects to LeanTakt and flow. LeanTakt is not just about lines on a schedule. LeanTakt is about making work predictable so crews can move through zones without chaos. Rework destroys flow. Unclear customer expectations destroy flow. Quality at the source protects flow. When we pair customer clarity with daily foreman teaching, we stabilize the job and the schedule becomes real instead of aspirational.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.

If you are reading this as a superintendent, project manager, or owner, you also have a role. You must ensure the field has the information, visuals, and process to execute the requirements. It is not enough to say, “Build per plans and specs,” and hope it works out. The field needs the requirements translated into executable standards. That is leadership. That is respect.

To make this tangible, and again using a second small bullet section only to help you see where projects usually break, the common gaps I see are these:

• The team cannot clearly identify which areas are exposed, featured, or architecturally sensitive until it is too late to plan properly.
• The feature of work board exists in someone’s head or in a binder, but not in a visual format the crew actually uses in the field.
• The foreman is expected to “just know” and “just manage it,” without a daily training rhythm that builds shared understanding.

When you close those gaps, you stop fighting quality and start producing it.

Build the Ice Cream They Ordered

So here is the challenge I want to leave you with. Tomorrow morning, ask yourself and your crew one question before you release them into production. Do we know what the customer wants here, specifically. If the answer is not crystal clear, slow down long enough to clarify it. Highlight exposed areas. Confirm alignments. Make a quick feature of work visual. Teach it in your huddle. Reinforce stop, call, and wait. Do that for one week and watch what happens to your rework, your inspector relationship, your crew confidence, and your project flow.

Elevate Construction exists to elevate the entire construction experience for workers, leaders, and companies. We do that by building systems that respect people, create clarity, and produce flow. That is how we create remarkable projects and remarkable careers.

I will end with a quote that should humble all of us and also empower us. W. Edwards Deming said, “Quality is everyone’s responsibility.” In the field, that responsibility becomes real when we know what the customer wants and we build it right the first time.

FAQs

What does customer service mean in construction?
Customer service in construction means delivering the product the customer requested, with the finishes, alignments, and performance they expect, without forcing them to accept substitutions or surprises.

How can a foreman prevent rework caused by unclear expectations?
A foreman prevents rework by clarifying customer requirements, using a feature of work board or checklist, teaching expectations in a daily crew preparation huddle, and reinforcing stop, call, and wait.

What is a feature of work board and how is it used?
A feature of work board is a visual standard that shows what “right” looks like for a scope or area, including customer requirements and key quality checkpoints, so the crew can install with clarity.

How does stop, call, and wait improve quality and safety?
It prevents workers from installing uncertain work, triggers immediate foreman support, and reduces rework, which lowers risk and keeps production stable.

How does LeanTakt connect to quality at the source?
LeanTakt relies on predictable work and clean handoffs. Quality at the source reduces rework and chaos, which stabilizes flow and makes zone-based scheduling reliable.