Message From MD – April 2018

Dear friends,

This edition announces the dawn of a new financial year, 2018-2019, and it also marks the publication of 60 successful previous editions. Five years, 60 months, of uninterrupted publication is not a small achievement for a company like ours. Happy to note that ‘Beyond Square Feet’ reaches to more than a lakh Malayalees across the world.

We have witnessed the record-breaking performance of Assetians across all functions in the FY 17-18. All departments such as Planning, Projects, Sales, Marketing, Customer Delight, Finance, Interiors, HR, IT/ERP and Administration have performed exceptionally well. Last FY witnessed highly successful sales campaigns such as Jackpot Season 2. Congratulations to all performers and I take this opportunity to wish each and every team member a successful and fruitful year ahead.

I am happy to note that we have created a brand that stand first among the lot on project delivery, customer service, great place to work, finance management, innovative marketing and sales activities along with compliance of rules and regulations. The word TOTAL QUALITY reflects the expected perception of the customer base. The product quality stands first among this group. Five years ago there was a big gap between the perceived quality and real quality of products delivered by us. It resulted in customer dissatisfaction even though the product performance was superior compared to other available products in the market. Today we can confidently claim that we deliver the BEST quality constructed homes in Kerala. The systems followed, process adhered, materials selected, man power deployed, quality checks conducted and supervision imposed makes sure that we make the BEST quality homes. We have decided to open up our project sites to all those interested to check out our execution skills, talents and quality standards. The Asset Quality Festival will be conducted in all major cities at our project sites from 16th to 30th April. We would be publishing a Quality Manual, which will help home buyers the visible and invisible aspects of construction quality. We would be reaching out to 10,000 families in that period with this Manual, which will be of great use to homebuyers.

Five years ago, when we did an audit we realized that there was lot of scope for improvement in the construction processes followed by us.  Top management commitment to total quality and continuous improvement was very important and was need of the hour at that point of time. Looking back, those kind of bold decisions taken then have helped us overcome the gap between perceived and actual quality.

As construction industry professionals, we are well aware of the importance of quality training and quality partnership among various contracting and vendor firms. That will constitute an important step in developing a high quality product. We did firm steps on these important aspects. A proper feedback loop was created, which in turn upgraded the quality standards defined by us.

We understood that clarity of project scope and requirements as well as well detailed drawings and specifications are a prerequisite for high quality process. Quality is not accidental but it is the result of lot many conscious efforts on improvisation of systems and processes. I am happy to note that we could adopt and practice such steps in our project division for the last five years.

We adopted a new philosophy not to accept commonly accepted delays, defective workmanship and materials and mistakes at site. Inspections at site by both internal and external agencies were made mandatory. We also decided to improve the quality of incoming materials so that the finished product will be the best. We also stopped the practice of awarding contracts based on just lower price alone. We started practicing continual reduction of wastage so as to yield continual increase in productivity and decrease in costs. We made it compulsory to use most modern methods of on the job training and education to all technical staff. Instituted new methods of supervision at all levels to find out leadership talents and effectively redistributed the human resources.

We were able to understand that ‘Fear’ was a big barrier between the boss and team members and to drive it out we have created an effective two way communication system. Thanks to WhatsApp Groups for the wonders! We were able to brake down all the barriers created by the old boss between different sub heads of project department such as purchase, estimation, design, drawings, billing and site supervision. We have stopped all slogan campaigns, quality melas, target appraisal and merit ratings to make team forget the past experience of favoritism and wrong assessments. Instead we created a co education and self-improvement program.

In fact I was lucky enough to get a great leader like Mr. Mahesh (Chief Technical Officer) and his colleagues such as Mr. Sajith (GM, Projects) and Mr. Jijo (GM, Purchase), permanently committed in improving quality and productivity by going through a clearly defined management system.

We know there is no end to excellence and we will continuously strive towards betterment and improvisation. Our goal of the new FY is nothing but TOTAL QUALITY IMPROVEMENT in all aspects of our business.

Regards

Sunil Kumar V