Company Updates
2024 Retrospective – Big Changes at LCS
December, 2024
Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” In an industry undergoing massive changes, it is crucial not only to adapt to the latest developments but also to anticipate future industry needs.
LCS accomplished a lot in 2024, with key initiatives designed to make us safer, more efficient, and better positioned for the future. As the year comes to a close, we wanted to highlight the top three strategic achievements that set us up for growth in 2025.
1. Safety Oversight Improvements
By hiring a dedicated safety manager and consciously allocating safety budgets, responsibilities, and resources, we’ve designed, built, and launched a fully defined Safety & Health Program. This program allows us to set and enforce defined safety standards, policies, and procedures across the board, making it easier to maintain our safety standards from job to job.
A priority in launching the Safety & Health Program was to integrate it seamlessly into the existing workflow using familiar tools like Procore. We also ensured the program is field-friendly, making it easy to get supplies, training, and support to the team with minimal disruption.
This program has been extremely well received across the organization. Having a dedicated safety person to review, support, and manage all safety policies and issues in a defined and transparent way has boosted the field team's confidence in their everyday practices. They know they have the support and equipment needed to approach each situation confidently and keep our workers safe
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2. Streamlining Job Management
We’ve made consistent efforts to improve our construction job management by increasing communication and collaboration, enhancing data and analytics, and monitoring existing processes.
Ensuring proper communications, processes, and consistent data collection is key to monitoring and managing a project profitably. To achieve this, we focused on key initiatives including:
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Standardizing the job handoff process with all key stakeholders to ensure smoother project standup and execution.
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Enhancing the data collection pipeline to transparently track and manage project budgets through new processes and reporting, ensuring more transparent cost control.
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Implementing direct monitoring of key processes such as daily logs and change order/T&M tracking to ensure proper procedures are followed, resulting in better project transparency and verifying that we are tracking and billing for our work.
These efforts have resulted in smoother project onboarding, better project communication, more consistent process execution, and improved cost control – all contributing to sustainable and profitable growth.
3. Strategic Staff Development
Possibly the most impactful changes in our business have been regarding staff. Key acquisitions and promotions have set LCS up for a bright future in 2025 and beyond.
LCS increased our workforce by 30% this year, adding key pieces to the team including:
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Building a versatile in-house labor team suitable for military jobs that can also travel and support crews across our entire territory. This allows us to respond to needs for competent people on the ground and develop the next generation of construction leaders.
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Hiring a dedicated Safety & Quality Manager, which has reaped benefits by making LCS safer and supporting many key improvement initiatives throughout the year.
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Bringing in a talented new estimator to help drive new business into the organization, a key piece in driving inbound projects and growth.
Internally, we promoted a new superintendent and a new foreman from our existing, seasoned staff, giving us the ability to effectively run more job sites while maintaining our standards. We also made a significant investment in standardized training, with more employee-development training initiatives on the roadmap for 2025
Though 2024 has seen tremendous change at LCS, each previous year saw similar leaps, and each successive year will likely be no different. Change is a constant in our industry, and we will keep evolving as we grow and as conditions change around us. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of each and every one of our team members, we have accomplished much and look forward to achieving even more in 2025!
