National Association of Home Builders Essay Example for Free

National railroad tie of al-Qaida Builders EssayPurpose and BackgroundThe National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is a slyness connectedness whose mission is to enhance the climate for the housing and building industriousness. A top goal for the NAHB is to provide and string out opportunities for all potential menage buyers to have safe, affordable and decent housing. The NAHB also works with federal agencies on regulations affecting the housing assiduity in beas such as mortgage finance, codes, cipher and the environment. check to the NAHB, nigh eighty percent of the homes built in the United States be constructed by NAHB members. In 1993 the NAHB and Reed task Information, publishers of Professional Builder and Professional Remodeler magazines established the National Housing role Awards (NAHB web localise). The National Housing feature Awards (NHQ) was modeled after the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award program and represents the housing industrys hi ghest learning for reach outments in total attribute prudence.The NHQ destine promotes and rewards best practices through and throughout the home building industry. It recognizes home builders for cosmos revolve abouted on note for the guest in building, business management, sales, warranty service and design. The NHQ award is readable to all U.S. home builders that believe their corporation meets or exceeds the qualities above. The home builder completes an finishing summons and goes through an extensive interview process that requires a high level of doment from the lodge and their management team. According to the NAHB application, every applicant forget receive a written report and applicants that are chosen for site visits will receive detailed reports that provide objective benchmarking for musical note mitigatement.The program is more than an award umpteen home builders use the award as a process for improving their processes to build a develop home for t he customer and a better fellowship for their shareholders. In the home building industry, the expectations for high action from the customers gets higher every year. Especially in the current housing market it is becoming more particular than ever that builders look for new products and processes that help to improvetheir companies in areas such as leadership, performance management, customer satisfaction, st directgic planning, construction quality, trade partner relationships, business results and human resources according to Steve Carroll of the NAHB.Award CriteriaThe NHQ awards are judged by a qualified goods who evaluate all the applicants and selects finalists who demonstrate high levels of quality bring home the baconment based on leadership, strategic planning, performance management, customer satisfaction, human resources, construction quality, trade relationships and business results. The experts can request additive information during the application process, inc luding customer satisfaction surveys, participation references and other information related to judging the criteria. In the Leadership category the panel experts will look at the partnership mission and set to turn back if they guide the organization toward a common purpose. They review how senior management reinforce and instill the mission, values and vision in the club as role models and through empowering employees. They will also look at how the club demonstrates public responsibility and good citizenship while improving the home building industry. In the strategic Planning category the experts will look at how your company assesses and will address the key strategic challenges that the company faces in the next one to five years.They look at how the challenges are identified and analyse and the overall plan development, deployment and feedback for the company including how the plan is tied to the mission, vision and values. They will review how the plan leverages the c ompanys skills, get it on, agnizeledge and the lack of skills, experience, knowledge and resources. In the Performance Management category the experts review how the company develops, manages, measures, and improves the key processes to achieve performance excellence. The Customer Satisfaction category allows the experts to look at the companys design and delivery of products and services with a high level of customer satisfaction. The applicant will use up to address how the company identifies market segments, the level of focus on the market segments, how product features and service are selected to best serve the market segments that were identified, how the company develops customer relationships, key factors in customer satisfaction and how the company obtains and utilizescustomer feedback to improve performance.The Human Resource category addresses employee selection and development practices, motivation, satisfaction and compensation as it relates to the invoketh and succ ess of the company. The experts will review the work environment, the morale of the employees, the services and the company culture. The applicant will direct to address workforce development, staff performance management, and how both align with the companys goals. The Construction Quality category will allow the experts to review the methods that the company uses to drive quality in the home construction process and interpret high performance and trouble free products and services.Applicants will have to demonstrate the quality standards that are communicated and demanded from the trades and how the company continues to educate and reinforce the quality standards to both employees and trades. The experts will ask how new plans are reviewed for quality and how the customer is involved in this quality review process. Applicants should be prepared to describe the customers business office closing experiences, quality recognition programs and the companys warranty processes. The Trade Relationship category allows the expert panel to review how the company creates high performance relationships with the trade partners.The applicant should be prepared to discuss how the company establishes mutually beneficial relationships, trade partner selection process, problem avoidance through trade involvement and trade partner feedback. The final category is Business Results. Applicants need to present the measurements of the business benefits resulting from the companys high performance practices in the monetary, working(a), customer satisfaction and warranty areas. The experts may ask for customer satisfaction results from the last one to three years including the customers willingness to refer other buyers, financial results, employee satisfaction, trade satisfaction and operating metrics for the last three years.Benefits of the AwardMany of the home builders that prepare the NHQ application looking at that the application process and the experts comprehensive ev aluation report are valuable tools for planning change to improve their business regardless if they win the award or not. Many of the award recipients find that the bigest rate of betterment occurs in the year following their applicationor win (NAHB). Shea Homes and Pulte Homes put up that the NHQ award process helped them identify opportunities to improve and allowed them to perfect processes that improved the quality of their product and service. Improving total quality management can lead to streamlining processes that will reduce costs, improve the quality for the customer, reduce warranty calls and increase the female genitals line for the company. The NAHB encourages award winners to publicize and advertise the achievement to distinguish the company from the competition, establish the company as a top quality builder and raise the companys reputation as an industry leader.Winners are featured in Professional Builder magazine articles that highlight their quality management principles and will participate in a NHQ award panel discussion at the International Builders show which is the largest home builders convention in the United States. Benefits to applying for the award are endless for home builders that are willing to commit the time and effort needed to complete the application process. The application process forces many of the applicants to look at the processes in the company that contribute to ensuring total quality and make changes to allow the company to improve and focus on the companys mission, vision and values. The drawbacks to the NHQ award process is that it will take a committedness of time and energy to look at the quality processes in the company to analyze if it is moving the company in the direction of the mission, vision and values. Some companies may feel that this is a waste of time and energy or can be over whelmed at what processes need to be improved to get the company on track to improve quality.Past WinnersWinners are rec ognized in three categories gold, silver and in effect(p) mention. The gold award is given to companies that have achieved a national benchmark level in from each one area of evaluation. According to the NAHB website, gold award winners have mature, fully integrated quality management principles and systematically demonstrate high level sustained financial results. The silver award is given to companies that are industry leaders in most evaluation areas, they have refined business practices and they exhibit good financial results. An honorable mention is awarded when companies are recognized that demonstrate an understanding of quality management principles, show an improvement process and good financialresults are achieved in most areas. Below is a list of winners, the award that was received and the year it was awarded (NAHB website).Many of the applicants that have participated in the NHQ process, whether the company was awarded or not, have said that the application process h elped the company by having to look at all processes critically and make changes to improve the quality management for the company overall. Scott Thistle,president of Brookstone Homes, said, The award is a critical component of our commitment to customer satisfaction. By going through the NHQ program for the second year, it has enabled us to continually fine-tune our quality assurance systems and suppose a direct positive impact on our customers and their experience (Brookstone Homes).Home Builders that apply for the NHQ award know that the process requires a lot of time and effort prior to submitting the application to the NAHB and could involve potential changes to the operational processes of the company to keep the company focused on total quality management. Grayson Homes president, Cindy McAuliffe said At Grayson Homes, we recognise ourselves from others with a deserved reputation for quality homes and products, processes, service, and people. Our participation in NHQ progra ms keeps Grayson Homes and its trades focused on product, process and experience improvement (Mid-Atlantic Builder).ConclusionIn reviewing the NHQ award and the process involved in applying for the award I found that it was a benefit to each of the home builders that took the time, energy and efforts even if the company did not win an award. distributively of the companies that applied where able to review the quality processes that were in place, review the experts written report and modify the processes to achieve a higher level total quality management that improved the companys quality focus for internal and external customers. While I do feel that this would be a benefit for my company I believe that we would have a lot of work to do in streamlining processes to ensure that company wide we are using the same quality processes that will allow us to grow while following our mission, vision and values.The company was a small company based in twain markets that grew quickly to fo urteen markets prior to the housing market boom. This fast growth did not allow for the company to ensure that quality processes were being handled in the same manner from division to division. The company has in the onetime(prenominal) three years established a strategic mission for the company and continued with the values that has allowed them to achieve the ranking of the 24th largest builder in the United States. The NHQ award process would force the management team to review what processes where in place in all divisions and get on track with companywide policies and procedures so a customer buying a home in onedivision could expect the same great product and service in another division.ReferencesBrookstone Homes Newsroom. BrookstoneHomes.com. 15 Mar. 2008. http//www.brookstonehomes.com/newsroom/2006_august2.asp.Carroll, Steve. Telephone interview with National Association of Home Builders Research Center. March 14, 2008.Mid-Atlantic Builder Corner Newsletter. Mid Atlantic B uilder. 16 Mar. 2008. http//www.homebuilders.org/file_depot/0-10000000/0-10000/48/ cusp/40005/ MBX_0105_60-70.pdf.National Housing Quality Award. National Association of Home Builders Research Center. 15 Mar. 2008. http//www.nahbrc.org/technical/awards/nhqa.aspx. Stromberg, Meghan. NHQ trounce Practices. Professional Builder. September 2001. 1 Sep. 2001.