Building Science Builds Award Winning Business
Each year LBM Journal recognizes three companies of different sizes to acknowledge outstanding performance with their annual entrepreneur of the year awards. This year one of Mark’s clients, Parr Lumber of Oregon, has won that honor. Parr Lumber has spent considerable time in the past few years reorganizing and adapting systems to better meet its customers’ needs.
Beginning in 1996 individual store locations were integrated into a single cohesive organization to create supply side efficiencies and a focus on the fundamentals of good material supply. After realizing initial economies of scale, Parr Lumber began to develop strategic marketing services to support their builder customers’ success. This unique approach for adding value led to deeper partnership with customers through an initiative called Plant-Based Housing.
By building walls, trusses, and envelope assemblies in a controlled factory environment Parr Lumber was able to increase quality assurance and minimize waste, passing those benefits on to customers. A natural outgrowth of this initiative was to address the technical challenges of ensuring best practices, once adopted, were continued and maintained in the field. Through a partnership with Building Knowledge and under the direction of Mark Laliberte, Parr Lumber launched “Parr High Performance System”.
Introduced in January 2008 the system consists of four key elements: sealing the home against air and moisture; retaining all HVAC duct work in the conditioned air space; using advance framing techniques; and testing the home’s improved efficiency after construction. Builders who use “Parr High Performance System” are able to quickly align themselves with good building science, a better economic value proposition, and homeowner’s demand for green building.
Parr continues to extend their commitment to best practices by identifying environmentally friendly products in a program called “Get Real” that provides detailed information via a website as well as in stores . Under Mark’s guidance, Parr Lumber has focused on simplifying the green building concept for builders to make it easy to understand, reliable to build, and a strategic advantage for builders and homeowners alike.
Congratulations to Parr Lumber for applying innovative thinking to create new opportunity in a sluggish market. To read the complete article in LBM Journal click here.