Pool & Spa News
By John Miles

The housing market may have lost some steam in the last nine months, but it hasn't stopped Dave Reinert and Shasta Industries from conducting robust business.

"Even if there's a slowdown in new construction, we don't have the same [letup] when it comes to remodeling," Reinert said. "When people stay in their houses, they start to think, 'Maybe I should remodel the kitchen or update the pool.'"

Reinert spent the last 10 years at Sunvek, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based home remodeling firm, serving most recently as its vice president/general manager. Then in February, he saw an opportunity at Shasta, a Pool and Spa News Top Builder in Phoenix, and joined the company as general manager of its Remodeling Division.

Despite the fact that his experience is in overseeing interior construction, Reinert said the transition has been surprisingly easy.

"There's a lot of synergy between [the work at Sunvek] and what I'm doing as the general manager in the pool remodeling business," he explained. "When it comes to the evaluation process, the staging, construction, cleanup and scheduling all the time frames and intervals - the processes are very similar between the pool and home construction [industries]."

Reinert stressed the importance of timely construction and communication. In fact, Shasta uses a team of customer service reps to keep customers informed.

"Shasta does a good job of tracking the phases of construction... even with an alarm code to tell [superintendents] if they've gone past the amount of allocated time," Reinert said.

For most customers, he added, the standard remodeling package includes a new pool finish and tile, recoating of the patio and a pool equipment upgrade. For more upscale and design-intensive projects, the company will add a spa or waterfeature, incorporate new landscaping, and even change the shape and depth of the pool.

Even with a 15.3 percent decrease in Western housing starts over the past year, Shasta has continued to capitalize on existing homes and older pools. Reinert isn't worried. As he noted, "[Homeowners] spend so much time in the backyard because of the beautiful climate here... they still see [the remodeling] as a good investment.

Labels: Pool and Spa News, shasta, shasta-pools

Pool & Spa News
by Joshua Keim

In a push toward vertical integration, Shasta Industries Inc. recently acquired FossilCrete Inc., a manufacturer of stamped concrete systems. The sale was for an undisclosed amount.

FossilCrete was founded in 2002. The Oklahoma City company began as a contractor, creating artificial boulders, waterfalls and vertical stamped concrete forms, eventually making its products aPublish Postvailable to other builders. The firm has doubled in size each year, according to Stanton Pace, the company's former president who has been retained as director of new product development.

"This is a dream come true for our company because now we'll have Shasta's tremendous marketing, sales and training support backing up our product," Pace said. "Those were our biggest hurdles because we were growing so fast. This will allow us to take the line to the next level."

Shasta plans to operate the FossilCrete line under the company's sister division, Xcel Surfaces. For 10 years, Xcel Surfaces has made decorative concrete for custom decking.

"This is a good marriage for us because it allows us to increase our product offerings," said Andy Blake, manufacturing operations officer at Shasta of Phoenix, a Pool & Spa News Top Builder. "It's also a good fit with our pool-building business under Shasta Pools & Spas."
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The acquisition represents Shasta's continued pursuit of vertical integration by bringing additional manufacturing operations in-house. For example, the firm also owns A&A Manufacturing Inc., which produces automated pool products such as in-floor cleaning systems and chlorinators. "Having manufacturing capabilities that other pool- [building] companies don't have allows us to be more independent," said Blake, who will oversee the new business segment.

Added Pace, "Now that we're free to pursue new ideas, we're going to come up with a bunch of new products."

On that note, he said that some manufacturing, research and development, and technical service will remain at FossilCrete's plant in Oklahoma City. But business operations and additional manufacturing for FossilCrete will be moved to the Xcel Surfaces facilities in Phoenix.

Labels: fossilcrete, Pool and Spa News, shasta, shasta-pools

Pool & Spa News
by Julie Phillips Randles

When Jeff Ast saw a bank of arrival/departure screens at the airport, the vice president of construction at Shasta Industries, a Pool & Spa News Top Builder, wondered if similar technology could be implemented to keep pool projects on track.

Responding to Ast's query, the Phoenix firm's information technology team developed a warning system that would notify employees if a pool under construction had fallen behind schedule.

The alarm system uses a ceiling-mounted projector that illuminates a large spreadsheet onto a wall in the construction office. If a project goes into "alarm mode," it shows up on the wall. Initially, three criteria would prompt an alarm:

1. No comments has been entered into the project's electronic file in three days.
2. One construction phase has been completed, but the next phase has not been scheduled.
3. The project superintendent has not made an inspection of the site within 24 hours of the slated inspection date.

Additional alarm triggers recently were added to ensure that each pool is completed promptly.

"In 35 calendar days from the start of construction, a pool should be completed," says Edward Yacknin, internal new pool construction/operations manager. "If it goes over that, it signals to us that something has gone wrong."

To further alert the staff, the text description of the posted projects is color-coded based on the number of days that have passed since the file was last updated. If a project fails to meet a deadline, it appears in basic black. If 10 to 14 days pass and the project is still off schedule, the text is highlighted in blue. At 15 days, everyone sees red.

Staying on schedule

The alarm program works in conjunction with Shasta's Integrated Construction Management System. This data-driven program helps manage the nearly 600 pools that are under construction at any one time.

Using the ICMS program, the builder documents every contact made with a client. Shasta's superintendents and schedulers then can simultaneously track all stages of a project. They can set dates for each construction phase and note when each step is completed.

"We can see a step-by-step journey, so to speak," Yacknin says. "We have all of this history at our fingertips to try and serve the customer."

Employees can view the ICMS data by logging onto the company's internal network. There, information on individual jobs can be easily accessed.

While he doesn't have quantitative proof, Yacknin says his "gut feeling" is that the alarm system, in tandem with the ICMS, is improving the speed with which Shasta is able to build pools.

"There is an added urgency among our people when they see things up on the alarm system," he says. "It tells them, 'I better take a sharper look at this.'"

Tech tips

* Take the time to thoroughly document a project. Company reps can input courtesy notes about a customer, curious details about a job or even a phase-specific note for the entire staff to see.
* Consider instituting an incentive program based on the number of pools that trigger the warning system.
* Regularly evaluate the reasons why jobs wind up on the alarm wall. Communicate with your staff on how to avoid these pitfalls.

Labels: Pool and Spa News, shasta, shasta-pools

Pool & Spa News

The Master Pools Guild gave out its 2003 Awards of Excellence earlier this year. The program garnered 312 entries in 27 categories. Thirty-two companies were given 200 honors.

The top honor, the Grand International Award, went to Phoenix-based Shasta Pools & Spas for a nine-vessel aquascape at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa. Situated in Phoenix's largest resort, the project has several water features and a lazy river. "It's nice to be able to do projects on that scale that garner recognition by such a prestigious group of peers," said John Neely, Shasta's marketing manager.

According to Master Pools Executive Director Dick Covert, builders are submitting more water features and naturalistic pools. The group's next meeting is set for Nov. 3 in Virginia.

Labels: Pool and Spa News, shasta, shasta semi-commercial, shasta-pools

Pool & Spa News
by Rebecca Robledo

Shasta did it by planting firm roots and growing from there - Builders

Even the biggest companies sometimes have to start small.

Take, for example, one of the top builders on the Pool & Spa News 100 (No. 3 Builder). Phoenix-based Shasta Industries began 36 years ago as a three-man operation.

In its first year, the company built 25 pools. But after that, it grew exponentially. In its second and third years, the number of pools grew to 235, then 535. By 1969, the number had grown to more than 900, says Shasta CEO Skip Ast, who joined the company one year after his brother, Robert, founded it with a local home builder.

Today, pool building comprises only one division in the company. Shasta also manufactures automatic pool cleaners and deck coatings, and runs a retail operation, a commercial pool division and a customer-care division. This all takes a staff just shy of 600--not to mention a disciplined business plan, including strategy meetings every other week.

To help recruit and maintain its large staff, Shasta hired a full-time trainer in the mid-'90s.

Before then, Shasta had been sending employees to outside seminars for this kind of training. But the costs added up until they were about equal to a full-time salary. Now, with a dedicated full-time trainer, Shasta ensures that all employees receive the same messages and information without losing a whole day to go off-site.
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Individual division managers still train for basic job skills. But the trainer conducts seminars on subjects such as Stephen R. Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, as well as communication and how to develop synergy within the organization. And everyone goes in for this kind of ongoing training from time to time, from the field crews to Ast himself.

In Ast's mind, this kind of work is at least as important as product issues, such as quality of craftsmanship. "I have always felt that we're in the people business first, then in the pool business second," he says. "Because the pool business will never be any better than the people you have harnessed to it, and the synergy that you develop from them."

Labels: Pool and Spa News, shasta, shasta-pools