For The Love Of Design: Quality Control, Tecza Environmental Group

Ted Tecza decided he wanted to be a landscape architect in the eighth grade.

“I was working with my dad on a very large estate and we were planting a bunch of trees,” explained Ted, president of Tecza Environmental Group, Elgin, Ill. “I thought the whole experience was really neat. One day, the owner happened to walk by and I didn’t think anything of asking this very wealthy client how he knew where to put all the trees. He explained how he got a landscape architect to design and plan it out.”

From that point on, Ted stuck with this career choice, even to the extent of applying to only one college after high school graduation: The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Ill., a school with a good landscape architecture program.

As Tecza strengthened the design/build side of the business, he quickly realized the extent of the work involved in the process. “I was very naïve at the time and only wanted to work on designs,” he said. “Then I discovered I had to sell the designs, install them, collect the money from them and then pay the bills from them. Soon, I was running this side of the business.”

Design/build work, Ted’s passion, is what drew him into the landscape industry. Today, despite the company’s focus on expanding the maintenance side of the business to protect it from a potential economic downshift, the design/build roots of the company are what forced Ted to develop a client-focused niche and learn how to manage residential customers. These two solid company attributes, along with some structural changes made in the design/build process along the way, are what built a successful operation.

BUILDING BLOCKS. The best business move Tecza made in the late 1980s was establishing a design/build focus, which includes “high-end residential customers in the Chicago area who want to spend $500,000 in landscaping,” described Adam Tecza, Tecza’s vice president of construction. The landscapes typically are 12,000- to 17,000-square-foot homes on 5 to 7 acres, Adam said.

Establishing this niche made it possible for Tecza to stop doing bid work, which didn’t support the company’s overhead or new quality-conscious image. “We do very little bid work unless its for a builder or developer we have a relationship with,” Adam explained. “Our design/build pricing and quality work typically do not fit within the bidding arena, and the bid mentality is lowest price gets the job - we didn’t want to play that game.”

The company further strengthened its presence in the design/build arena in the early 1990s by outsourcing design work, which lowered overhead costs and enabled the company to develop relationships with more designers (see sidebar below). “I must admit to a prejudice - I wanted to design,” Ted said. “That’s what I like to do, so outsourcing our design work was a major change for us.”

The final modification that improved Tecza’s design/build service in the early 1990s was the move to serving as a general contractor for all its clients. “We provide many services for our clients simply because the more we do for them the more they want us on site,” Ted said. “The single source concept is very important to our clients - it makes their jobs easier. We want to make their lives easier by not bringing them any problems, but by solving their problems. So the more that we can do well for them, the more valuable we are to them.”

Becoming a general contractor also set Tecza apart from the competition in the Chicago area, Adam said. “There aren’t many companies in the area that will take on an entire project, including irrigation, hardscaping, plantings, tennis courts, swimming pools, night lighting, etc. We have a big database full of subcontractors so if the project includes something that is outside the house - even if we don’t do it - we’ll find someone to do it and we’ll handle it for the client,” he explained.

While playing the role of a general contractor can lead to profits, dealing with various subcontractors who handle different technical jobs, such as irrigation and lighting, can present challenges, Adam said. Tecza managers need to learn a little bit about many different trades so that they can answer client questions and properly organize the job schedule, ensuring that the right trades are on the job site in the right order.

“For instance, if tree preservation needs to happen on the site, we need to get in there and do deadwood pruning and fertilization and then block off the area around the tree so the carpenter doesn’t drive on site and park his pickup truck underneath the tree to eat his lunch, compacting the tree’s root zone,” Ted pointed out.

By establishing a design/build niche, replacing bid work with quality-conscious, high-end clients, outsourcing design work and becoming a general contractor, Tecza recouped nearly $1 million lost from the economic recession in the late 1980s and has continued to grow through client referrals.

As Tecza focuses on growing the maintenance portion of the business more aggressively - 18 to 20 percent, the design/build business will stabilize and grow by only 8 to 10 percent annually. The service split is currently 55 percent design/build and 45 percent maintenance, but Tecza managers expect that to become 60 percent maintenance and 40 percent design/build - very different from the company’s early days of 80 percent design/build and 20 percent maintenance.

THE D/B CLIENT. Tecza Environmental Group’s design/build clients are 90 percent residential, and 80 to 85 percent of the company’s design/build work is referral or repeat client business. “We do a good job for somebody and then they pass us on to somebody else,” Ted said. “We’ve had clients for 25 or 28 years who we continue to work with. The majority of our clients have been with us 12 to 15 years.”

But Tecza employees can’t sit back waiting for client referrals to bring them additional work on a silver platter. Regular relationship building is the key to maintaining and growing a business. This involves touching base with builders or architects the company has relationships with once a month or once every six weeks to see what projects they have coming up, Adam explained. “Our contacts will either mention our name to the people they are working with or they’ll give us their numbers and we’ll contact them to determine their needs,” he said.

Since the company doesn’t concentrate on low-cost, bid work and focuses on value, its prices are higher. In a bid situation, Tecza’s prices may be as much as 40 percent higher than the lowest bid and 15 percent higher then the next bid, Adam said. In a design/build situation, Tecza’s prices may be 15 to 20 percent higher then the lowest price.

”Our work is very relationship-based,” said Ed Reier, Tecza’s vice president of maintenance. “Our clients will pay more for that relationship and, in turn, they end up with a better product in the field. The philosophy of having a quality organization has always been preached, but I think we’re doing a better job at practicing that also. And the amount of referral work we get every year is proof of that.”

Once Tecza establishes a relationship with its customers, selling these high prices to its clients isn’t difficult. “Last year, my success rate was approximately 76 percent,” Ted enthused. Adam, who is in his first year of design/build sales, has closed more than half of the sales he has presented to clients.

Once a client is referred to Tecza and fits the company niche, Ted or one of the landscape architects the company works with develops a conceptual landscape plan based on the client’s information. If the client is satisfied, the architect creates a final drawing with plant material labels, but not before asking for a design deposit up front.

“We go into the conceptual drawing without any deposit, but once they want us to move into the final project or final plan, then we ask for a deposit anywhere from $500 to $2,500, depending on the size of the job,” Adam explained. “For instance, a drawing for a 5,000-square-foot house could cost anywhere from $800 to $1,200 for the deposit based on the time required to do measurements and the challenges of planning the job based on the site conditions. If we’re talking about a 15,000-square-foot house like a mansion and the architect will be spending a lot of time there taking measurements, the design costs more. Architects charge an hourly rate so drawing time is factored into the cost.”

AFTER THE SALE. After Tecza Environmental Group sells a design/build job and completes the landscape drawing or plan, the job information is entered into a report system by the receptionist or office manager. Then the information is passed on to the construction supervisor, who begins ordering all the plant material for the job.

The construction supervisor and staff, which includes five crews of three to five employees, have meetings every Wednesday to discuss the jobs taking place in the next 10 days. Sold jobs are placed on the schedule based on clients’ needs and the company’s other jobs and priorities.

“Once that job comes up on the schedule, we go out into the field and set up that job,” Adam said. “The whole design/build scheduling process is fairly simple.”

As the job continues, the original sales person is usually on the site every other day to evaluate its progress. “On a job that takes one month to finish, I’m probably talking to that client two to three times each week,” Adam pointed out.

Constant communication is the key to dealing with residential clients, Adam insisted. “I try and talk to clients three out of every five days during their landscape installation projects,” he said. “All last minute changes or plan revisions are brought up immediately so clients aren’t surprised by things that appear different than originally planned, such as unexpected elevation changes or drainage problems.

“Rarely does something slip by unless we forget to write something down or make a phone call,” he continued. “Though during a project we’re on the job so much that we tend not to forget anything. On days we aren’t at the property, we are usually on the phone with the client.”