Obviously the title is anachronistic in nature but I haven’t been able to come up with a suitable change. Maybe Labor, Machinery and Materials LMM? I’m open to suggestions.
The reason for the post however is undeniably a problem within the industry. GC’s expect change orders to be broken down to the M+M+M= formula. HOWEVER…what happens when this formula’s simplicity is actually it’s downfall. Unless a subcontractor can afford a person on-site every day there are times where keeping track can be impossible.
For example. A fairly new concrete masonry unit (CMU) product (Insultech) was brought into Utah by CRH/Old Castle/Echelon/Amcor. This product consists of a structural unit and a veneer attached via two stainless steel clips that are embedded in an XPS foam core. Basically it is an insulation sandwich. Problems arose immediately when the local producer Amcor was unable to produce their own structural units and worse had problems assembling the final product in Salt Lake City. The company used two different temp agencies during the assembly and they could not deliver certain shapes as promised in company literature. They had neither a bond-beam mold of half-size mold.
The veneer faces were delivered oftentimes broken/cracked or would fall off when the block was picked up. This caused numerous delays whereby defective units would have to be transported back off the scaffold and re-palletized to be sent back or recycled on-site. Long story short it became obvious that all that was really required was to use a little junior high school algebra. The known factor was the average block lay rate per size and per day. Anything extra time required was the difference when using Insultech.
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