Hi there,
Welcome to Episode 14 of ‘Waterproofing Wisdom’.
In this episode, I discuss what makes a Specialist Contractor a Specialist. This episode follows part one, where I explained the value of Specialist Waterproofing Contractors and demonstrated exactly why they should be part of every project with waterproofing needs.
I think this content will be especially relevant to Structural Engineers, Waterproofing Specialists, Project Managers and Architects.
You can watch the short 7 min video here, by clicking on the button below, or reading on for the highlights.
Introduction
I start by discussing the definition of a Specialist, doing one thing and doing it well, and why that is important when it comes to waterproofing. I then discuss competence and how crucial it is to not just have competent individuals, but a competent process and system built within your organisation. I champion those who work this way, and highlight how easy it is to make mistakes if the bigger picture is not considered.
Waterproofing Wisdom
Specialist Structural Waterproofing Contractors ensure a competent process when it comes to getting waterproofing right. This is established from years of experience and obtained knowledge, skills and behaviours that are evident throughout the organisation, which you cannot quickly or easily replicate.
Closing Comments
Don’t rely on other professionals to fulfil your waterproofing needs, there is no substitute for a Waterproofing Specialist.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or comments regarding this episode. Here at CLW we love to chat waterproofing!
Many Thanks,
Ben Hickman
Technical Director
02074584073
Hello and welcome to another episode of Waterproofing Wisdom!
This is Part 2 of a series that I’m doing regarding Specialist Contractors.
And I’m talking about what makes a Specialist Contractor a Specialist Contractor.
If you look at Part 1, I share a funny video about some parents trying to give instructions to – sorry -some kids trying to give instructions to a dad on how to make a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
And no amount of clear explanation will tell the dad how to do it properly.
And I relate that to, you know – with waterproofing – no amount of clear instruction from somebody like CLW will get a Contractor who is incompetent to install waterproofing correctly.
So I wanted to talk about what makes a Structural Waterproofing Specialist Contractor.
And it’s worth just looking up what is the definition of a specialist.
It’s somebody who concentrates primarily on a particular subject or activity, somebody who’s highly skilled in a specific area.
So, CLW are specialists in waterproofing. We’re no more clever than other people in the design team.
We’re not necessarily…often a lot of what we bring to a design team is, comes merely from where we’re only focusing on the one thing.
So we don’t need to think about, you know, the escalators or the door handles, or the funding.
We focus just on the waterproofing, and wearing that one hat helps us talk about waterproofing better than other people can and would.
When it comes to a Contractor, what does a Specialist Contractor look like?
Well, I think it’s worth looking at building safety acts.
What is competence?
And competence is a mixture of knowledge, skills, experience and behaviours.
And one thing that I don’t think that is focused on enough in terms of competence is process.
And, as well as needing individuals within an organisation to be competent, we actually need a competent process.
And I think that’s something that’s very important – that Specialist Structural Waterproofing Contractors bring to the table.
So here’s a made-up org chart for a Specialist Waterproofing Contractor.
And you can see at the top here, we’ve got some Directors and then we’ve got somebody here who leads the Technical Department, somebody who does Business Development, somebody who does more Ops Management type stuff.
And then within the Technical, they’d have somebody, potentially a couple of people in an office doing design work, and then potentially somebody who’s out on site more, doing surveys. Those two might be the same entity on occasion, depends on the scale of the organisation.
And then typically you’d have somebody leading on site overseeing that if you’ve got multiple sites on at once.
And then you’d have team leaders who are on site every day, and installers. And in a good specialist structural waterproofing contractor organisation, everybody within that team is particularly focused on structural waterproofing.
The Director has probably been in the business 20 years.
And what that means is, they’ve seen it go wrong and they’ve had to put it right.
And so they care about that specific thing.
And in fact, they will shape this entire organisation around that.
The Technical Lead, same deal.
Sometimes the Technical Lead used to be an installer, and then they were Team Leader, and then they were a Site Manager, and then they were promoted to a Technical Lead.
They understand the whole of the thing around waterproofing.
They’re Specialists.
They’re probably not very good at door handles, but they’re very good at waterproofing.
And these guys down here will have some NVQs, and this Technical Lead will have as a minimum a CSSW qualification.
All of that works together to bring about the competence, not just in individuals – so that they’ve got the knowledge, skills, experience and behaviour, but a system, and an organisational structure that brings competence.
That is a different thing to good workers who aren’t competent, but they’ve had a toolbox talk, but they don’t have this management system.
Their bosses don’t understand the critical importance of waterproofing in the same way as a Specialist Contractor would.
They wouldn’t have the same QA arrangements.
They wouldn’t have the same understanding of what are the different suppliers, what are the different pots, how to mix it different in summer and winter, all of that sort of stuff.
I saw this and I thought that was quite kind of an interesting option, an interesting explanation.
So somebody has produced this sketch detail, and given it to somebody to fabricate in a metal workshop.
Presumably there was a little bit more content than that.
But what what the fabricator did was very literal.
They took what they saw and they put it onto the reality and they fabricated it.
So, here you’ve got 60 centimetres written, shaped with with great skill, but don’t get the full picture.
And here you’ve got written the dimension of 25 with, again great skill, but it misses the point.
It doesn’t understand the big picture.
So my appeal to the industry!
We work on large projects, some of these in the background we’ve worked on, and we love working with outstanding Project Managers and and great Developers and brilliant Architects and Engineers.
That’s kind of our thing.
We love that, and our appeal to to those parties is to; acknowledge the value in a Specialist Structural Waterproofing Contractor.
Too much of the time that’s seen as an expense.
A Cost Manager would just attribute, you know, it’s £250 per square metre of this product in this location.
And my appeal is, let’s move away from that.
Let’s acknowledge the importance of Specialist Waterproofing Contractors, particularly Members of the Property Care Association.
They’ve been audited and people can know that they’ve got that competence.
Let’s elevate those people.
You know, if it’s contractors design portion, which I often think it should be, then that party should be brought to the table early, potentially as part of the PCSA.
Let’s empower them to choose the right products, put them in the right place and deliver a project that doesn’t leak.
Thanks for watching!