mindset, which Chris says he tries to instill in every employee: “We don’t take shortcuts,” he says. “That’s important to me. That’s something I’m always pushing on our guys. ‘No shortcuts.’ Our focus should always be on what’s going to make the project last the longest and look the best. That’s what we always want to be working towards.” During the summer, Method Homes employs roughly 40 team members in-house, including a significant number of in-house carpenters, an inhouse paint crew, and a select roster of project managers. On the administration side, the team also includes both of Chris’ sisters – making the company “a bit of a family business,” he says. Because Method Homes employs so many of their team members directly, they are able to control the quality better than a lot of their competitors. They can also respond to issues a lot faster than most competitors, as they don’t have to work around the schedules of their subcontractors as much. “We have a lot of control over when guys are coming and going,” Chris explains. “If we need something, we can make a quick decision. We can pull a guy from here and put him on there so we can get the task done right away.” Of course, Method does have to rely on some subcontractors – and Chris says those relationships also tend to be very longstanding: “We have some key trades who we’ve been working with for over 20 years now,” he says. “For example, I’ve been working with our prime HVAC sub and our prime electrician since I started this company. Our shower glass guy I’ve been working with for 20 years now. We have some guys we really rely on.” At the same time, Chris says that Method Homes is growing, so they have also needed to develop some new relationships: “In the beginning, it was fine to have one company in each category to rely on,” he explains, “but now we’re big enough that those companies might not be large enough to handle all the work that we have to do. So over the past four or five years we’ve been working hard to develop more relationships. That’s been very difficult, but we’ve made a lot of progress.” MAY 2023
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