By Steven W. Hays, Sr., CPA

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Lightning is a tremendously powerful natural phenomenon that varies widely across the country. The force of a lightning strike can damage homes and electrical and mechanical systems, including gas piping. Bonding of gas piping (as required by applicable codes) to the electrical ground substantially reduces

this risk. However builders looking to improve safety for homeowners have asked their contractors to change from standard yellow-jacketed CSST to CounterStrike flexible gas piping.

A large custom home builder in western Pennsylvania was one of the first to specify CounterStrike in all of their homes. Before the switch, the home builder dealt with several lightning issues a year, but since switching to CounterStrike there have been no problems with lightning and gas piping. Other home builders in other high lightning prone areas throughout the mid-section of the country have also switched to CounterStrike . The switch makes sense to both builders and the contractors who install gas piping because of increased safety and decreased cost.  

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You open and close it thousands of times each year, but do you really know what's inside your front door?

A fiberglass entry door is more than just a beautiful accent on your house, it's a hard-working part of your home's structure. Constructed to meet durability guidelines and standards set by the Window and Door Manufacturers Association (WDMA) and the American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA) for resistance to air leakage, water penetration and wind pressure, a residential fiberglass entry door must also pass a testing standard of 25,000 door slams before it can be certified.

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The Builder Partnerships Team Delivers Results and Returns

  

Why not aim for a 12 percent net profit return for your homebuilding company?

At the heart of Builder Partnerships is a passion to help builder maximize their company's performance and profitability. The homebuilding industry's typical net profit return is 3.5 to 5 percent. That's not good enough.

Let Builder Partnerships show you the road map to improved performance and profitability. We will provide you with invaluable insights on management techniques and present you with the tools, processes and procedures you can readily implement to realize improved results across your organization.

Let us help you:

• Set achievable goals for your company
• Create a roadmap to success
• Set the right price to increase gross margins and sales
• Control and decrease construction costs
• Integrate management systems to increase efficiencies, reduce expenses and increase customer satisfaction
• Streamline processes throughout the back office
• Clarify and use financial information and ratio analysis to direct the decision-making process
• Understand key metrics and how to use them in the management of our company

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Builder Partnerships hosted it's 8th annual reception the night before the International Builders Show opened in Las Vegas. Once again, the joint was hopping as old friends reconnected and networking ensued. Our 15 sponsors found their tables crammed with homebuilders looking to learn more about their products.

The good vibrations continued on the show floor at the BP booth. The big change this year at the booth was the introduction of seminars on the show floor. We had standing room only crowds for a host of seminars that addressed all issues of homebuilding management from sales to purchasing to ownership issues to financial management. The seminars were led by the gang of top consultants working with Builder Partnerships, including Chuck Shinn, Emma Shinn, Tom Richey, Charlie Scott, Jim Weigel, Ed Hauck, Mark Henderson, Audrey Stroman and Brad Bombardiere.

Throughout the three day show, the traffic was steady, and our partners in the booth got plenty of chances to pitch their wares.

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