Awards

2002 Custom Homes Pacesetter Award

Custom Home proudly presents the winners of the eighth annual Pacesetter Awards program. Co-sponsored by Custom Home and the National Association of Home Builders' Custom Builders Committee, the award honors professionals who have demonstrated the highest level of performance and the strongest commitment to excellence in six areas of the custom building business: management, customer service, marketing, design, innovation, and production. Each of the 13 custom builders honored this year offers a powerful example of custom building at its most successful. Their stories, which appear on the next 12 pages, show what it takes to be the best in the business.

Stephen Rolston is not a control freak, but as a businessman he recognizes the value of nailing down as many key variables as possible. And in custom building, few things are as variable or as key to production efficiency as the performance and availability of trade contractors. Rolston holds his long-time subs in high esteem for their performance, but availability was always an issue. That is, until Rolston instituted a system that builds his subs into his schedule in a way that benefits both parties.

"The key component was incorporating the concept that they weren't going to take on projects that would take them away from us," Rolston says. To ensure that kind of fidelity, he has made his company a trade contractor's dream come true. "We're the only guy in our market who is both a builder and developer working in the range between $400,000 and $1 million," he says. That helps in two ways. By building homes at twice the local average price - and by paying his bills "incredibly quickly" - Rolston sweetens the jobs he offers to his subs. More important, controlling the land allows him to schedule jobs like clockwork. Using a "slot scheduling" system, Rolston plans a closing date every two weeks throughout the year. Working backward from the closing date gives him all the other important milestones in each job and lets him maintain his subs at a steady, predictable rhythm.

At any one time he averages between six and 12 active custom projects. But if a hole appears in his schedule he fills it with a spec house. If he has enough capital tied up in spec projects already, he says, "We'll just move ahead in the slot-schedule process those that are pre-sold." The result is a classic win-win scenario. "Our plumber knows that every other Friday he's got another house to rough," says Rolston, who spends Monday through Thursday doing better things than chasing his plumber.