Proving how we are different and better

If you’re not keeping score, it’s just practice. Words we live by at DPR.

As an organization dedicated to ongoing improvement, we must constantly benchmark our progress to ensure that we continue to deliver great results to our external and internal customers. How do we know if we are making a difference on a project unless we ask the right questions? If employees could change one thing at DPR, what would it be? If we do not track forecasted and actual completion dates, how would we know we are producing schedules that are accurate and reliable—ones that customers can count on?

By gathering metrics and keeping score of our performance over the last several years, we have identified areas for enhancement and become even better builders, delivering a higher quality product for our customers. In fact, based on 662 in-person Customer Satisfaction Surveys, 98.9 percent of our customers said they would consider working with us again on future projects. However, at DPR, 98.9 percent is not good enough. We want to know why 100 percent of our clients would not consider us for future projects. It is with this type of relentless accountability that we execute projects, seeking feedback at the beginning, middle and end to make sure that goals stay aligned and customer expectations are met.

Along with customer feedback, DPR uses several other tools to gauge our performance, both as a company and as one of the nation’s top technical builders.

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS (CSF). Preconstruction Excellence, Safety, Scheduling, Change Management, Zero Defects and Project Closeout are the six primary areas of the construction process that we have identified as critical to the successful delivery of any project-large or small. The University of California, Santa Cruz’s new Engineering Building (Page 3) serves as a good model of a project that has met nearly every CSF. For example, the project scored a perfect 5.0 on its customer satisfaction survey and was completed three months ahead of schedule, without a single recordable incident (more than 300,000 hours worked).

ANNUAL EMPLOYEE SURVEY. Every year since 1997, DPR has worked with an outside company to conduct an employee survey that captures a detailed picture of overall employee satisfaction in a variety of areas, from corporate culture and employee development to quality control/client service and management practices. This year’s results, which were recently reported company wide, ranked corporate culture, job satisfaction/security and safety as the three highest categories. Areas also showing improvement over years past include sharing of information, management practices and individual performance feedback. The results of the employee survey mean a great deal to us, because one of the biggest lessons we have learned is the key to happy customers is happy employees, and the key to happy employees is often two-way communication—the more the better. We want every employee in the company to know, and feel like, they have a voice, and they can make a difference at DPR.

Building the technically challenging and complex projects we like to build at DPR is not an easy task, and we do it better than anyone else in the country. Our technical competency and passion for building and learning continue to set new levels of performance, both internally and externally, that we will improve upon even further by measuring results.