This week I recruited the help of Lisset Lopez, our Business Improvement Leader, and Katie Maldonado, our HR & Communications Leader, to provide insight to how we achieve our Strategic Goal of becoming ONE. We have worked hard to bring together diverse businesses that enable us to provide a broader range of services to our customers, a unified and organized craft labor solution to our shareholder, and more work opportunities to our employees. I look forward to becoming ONE team on paper and in practice in the near future.

Lisset and Katie write:

For the last two years, our teams have worked diligently on integrating three businesses (APM, APCom and API) to become one craft labor service that can serve our Customers with the highest level of excellence. Our focus has been on leveraging our synergies within our systems, processes and culture to guide our path from being good to becoming great.

January 1, 2018 marked our official date as one craft labor service provider, but our work doesn’t stop simply because we reached our milestone date. There is still work to be done. One of the Wildly Important Goals (WIGS) on our 2018 Blueprint is captured as ONE: APM + APCom + API = 1 Craft Labor Service. Our focus is on standardizing our Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for increased productivity and efficiency, and leveraging ONE Team to deliver excellence.

What does this mean? It simply means that we are finding the best way of doing what we do daily and ensuring it is being applied across all lines of businesses. More efficient SOPs will lead to higher productivity because employees won’t have to stop to consider the best way to complete assigned tasks; It keeps labor flowing. It also ensures uniformity, thereby maintaining consistency of the services we provide. Another benefit of standardizing our processes is that it helps to provide better measurement and documentation of our performance, helping to identify the areas we need to target for continued improvements. Moving from data collection to action, identified as another WIG on our 2018 Blueprint.

In the coming months, we will also see our brands come together into ONE, a visual representation of our unity as one craft labor service provider. Why is this important? There are two main reasons. One, a singular brand furthers our goal to align our businesses and SOPs. We can focus on one team and one vision for our company’s future. Two, a brand is a promise for a specific experience. Any time you buy a product or a service, you probably have a mental picture of what your purchase will do and how it will improve your business or life. The same is true when our Customers think of our brands. By having one solid brand identity, we have the best control to ensure our Customers expect the highest level of safety, quality, efficiency and integrity when they partner with us. This will enable us to build an even more competitive reputation in our markets so long as we deliver and maintain the brand promise.

We have an experienced team of professionals, who take great pride in the work they perform daily. We are confident that we can educate one another through knowledge sharing, systems training, and continued engagement to build the strongest brand in our industry. This is how we move the pendulum from good to great!

Thank you Lisset and Katie. I am confident our vision for ONE is the right strategy.

- APM President, Jake Locklear