Here at Optimum Construction, we pride ourselves on our process. We’ve carefully curated it over the years to make each project as efficient as possible. But, good as it is, that process isn’t the secret to our success. It’s our team. Specifically our team of thoughtful, skilled, hardworking contractors and subcontractors.   What Makes our Team Exceptional On top of skill, our #1 quality (for ourselves too!) we look for? No jerks. It’s that simple. We believe that when teams are treated with respect and care, the end result is exponentially better. Richard Branson says it well: “Employee ..read more

In the last blog, we mentioned we wouldn’t leave the phrase “building better relationships” in the realm of airy-fairy marketing sloganeering but would show in tangible ways how our relational approach touches everything we do in this business. As a contractor, one of the most important relationships we negotiate is with our subcontractors. They are the hands of the entire building operation; without them, nothing gets built. But how do you build better relationships with subcontractors? And what kind of relationships do you need to have with subs for them to work for you? If you’re a contrac ..read more

At Optimum, we exist to build better relationships and better buildings. If this is the first Optimum blog you’re reading, that statement summarizes the entirety of who we are and what we’re about. If you’ve been reading along each month, you know that is the umbrella theme of all that we’ve been writing about. In fact, If you picked any of our past blogs at random, that is the common thread connecting all of them.  Several things may strike the reader when reading that statement, some obvious, the others not so apparent. First, it should be a no-brainer that a construction company shoul ..read more

Kendrick Ballantyne: President The Optimum Construction of today didn't pop out of thin air, the fully formed top-notch construction management firm it is today.  It was a long road that involved a lot of hard work and hard-won successes. If you’d told me when I first started this company that I’d be starting a second office in the Boston area, I might have questioned your sanity. It was difficult enough building a company in the smaller market of Portland. Despite the expected setbacks and a slow-growing process, we learned how to do things the right way. We didn’t take any shortcuts or ..read more

Every parent is thrilled by the first uncertain steps their infant takes, but no parent would be excited by the prospect of their perfectly healthy teenager crawling on all fours and asking for their butt to be wiped (they should be wondering if they read the wrong parenting books). There’s an assumption that, under normal circumstances, the child will shed the stages of infancy, grow up and become a fully formed human adult. Applying the metaphor to a work environment it’s no different: employees may start out like uncertain infants, falling down every three steps, but with time, effort, and ..read more

If you've spent any time around a construction job site, you've probably seen some version of this scene: Two guys, looking at a piece of work, scratching their heads.  They look at each other shrug and say…"looks good from my house".  With a chuckle and a nod and they turn to the next task of the day.   It happens all the time. You've been working on something all morning and you realize you made a mistake, a cut was an 1/8th off, a fastener was not quite centered in a piece of material, a scratch in the paint, something.  Mistakes there were, mistakes there will be ..read more

One of the most important factors in every project, at any stage of its development or completion, is the question of dollars and cents. Of course it is! This is business after all, right? And while it is a necessary part of business, at first glance it might seem to be off to the side of Optimum's central focus of building better relationships, or even that it might be something that gets in the way of that aim. Just think, how many times have dollars and cents been the cause of bad relationships, and sour endings? Lots! If that is the case, the way we work with money must be more closely tie ..read more

A lot of companies like to tout their “experience.” They add up the years each team member has been in the industry and crow that they come up with some impressive number like, “150 years of combined experience on their side.” I’ve always been impressed by them, but there is something more needed, isn’t there? Imagine a company with 100 employees but no one has worked in the industry for more than a year. How much is that 100 years of combined experience worth? Now if it was a team of 3 guys and they’ve worked together for that entire time, we’d probably pay more attention. So, what is experi ..read more

If you've gotten a feel for how Optimum works and what we care about most, you might have asked yourself "Why make such a big deal of the whole "relationships" thing? Aren't you a commercial construction business?" And you'd be right to ask, we really are aiming for something quite different in the way we do the work we do.  But if you've ever worked in the construction business, you might agree that you could also ask, "Why are people in construction often so miserable and grouchy to each other all the time?" While there are exceptions, we've found that construction sites are often plac ..read more

It’s punch list week on an interior fit-out job. All the pieces are just about in place and site superintendent Gino DiFazio is looking at a job almost done and done well, the goal he is shooting for every day.  Getting a job to that “done and done well”  place takes a lot more than nuts, bolts, nails, wood, and steel.  It takes people…..lots of people: clients, architects, trade apprentices, master carpenters, even the guy that cleans out the port-a-potty every week (yes, that’s part of the General Contractor’s job too).  They all have to pull together like a well-oiled m ..read more