A Positive Virus: Combining Cycling and Remodeling

This is a story about viral infiltration.

There’s this syndrome in the remodeling industry called “remodeling Fever.” It refers to a client’s typical reaction to watching their home get torn apart by a bunch of near strangers who practically live with them for the duration. The drywall dust gravitates throughout; numerous trucks clog their driveway; a window gets mistakenly left open overnight. The list can prove viral to the home’s inhabitants. Tempers elevate; fevers rise.

There’s another unrelated virus — bicycling — that is infiltrating our remodeling company, A-1 Builders. Unlike remodeling fever, we’re hopeful that this particular virus does gravitate throughout.

This story is about the union of the two viruses … cycling and remodeling … seemingly strange bedfellows.

It all started when our client, Ellen Barton, asked us if we would use bicycles for the transportation aspects of her remodeling project. This made sense, given her world view. For three years she’s been the program manager for the Whatcom Council of Governments’ everybodyBIKE, the bicycle education program for Whatcom Smart Trips . Whatcom Smart Trips is an ongoing partnership between local government, public agencies, employers and schools to promote transportation by walking, bicycling, sharing rides and riding the bus.

Ellen already knew I was infected by the cycling virus since I had taken a number of everybodyBIKE’s classes; I’m an all-weather cycling commuter (except for snow and ice), and this past summer I rode in two classic rides in Washington State — Cascade Bicycle Club’s Seattle to Portland (STP) ride, as well as Ride Seattle to Vancouver Then Party (RSVP).

Ellen’s challenge to my company was an opportunity to infect my co-workers.

First a brief description of her project: repair the faulty siding and deck connection performed about eight years ago by some other local contractor. No, not a large project — it took us three weeks — but a critical repair given her home’s exposure to Bellingham Bays’ southwest, wind-driven rains. Located on a bluff above the Nooksack River’s broad delta, the home is located on a difficult cycling road: one lane in each direction; no bike lanes, not even shoulders to speak of; 40 mph speed limit; a road notorious for alcohol-infused drivers; just past a terribly dangerous two-lane bridge along a blind, sweeping curve in the road, with concrete curbs and steel guardrails instead of shoulders.

I first approached our two carpenters of choice for the project. Chris Pasquini (37 years old; the Project Manager) and Adam Yost (28; Chris’ Support Carpenter) were game for the challenge, with some caveats:

Their cycling equipment was marginal, in need of some lighting, visible vests and warmer gloves.

Given the home’s location, they needed a tune-up on their skill sets.

They didn’t want their longer commute times to cost them any income.

Nor did they want their trucks to “live” on site during the project, given their exposure to possible vandalism. So their trucks couldn’t act as their tool boxes as they normally do.

I committed to help them over these speed bumps. How? I didn’t know quite yet, but I was determined to make this fly.

Just what aspects of the project were bicycles appropriate for? It’s one thing to get our carpenters there, but another to move equipment, materials, and debris. And what about the inspector Ellen hired to create the scope of work, as well as inspect our progress along the way? Ellen wanted an inspector’s input and oversight into the repair work because the first attempt had already failed. Would Leon Costanten of First Choice Building Inspection Services, Ellen’s inspector, be willing to bike there?

We settled for the following scenario:

Chris and Adam would cycle as often as possible getting to and from the site. Ultimately this became every single day except for the first day when they offloaded all of their tools, the last day when they picked up their tools, and one day when Chris was under the weather (so he took the bus instead, supporting our goal of using alternative transportation.)

When I called Leon, age 72, I asked him whether he would be game for this challenge. His response was instantaneous: “You’ll have to find another inspector!” Since he was already an integral part of the team, though, he remained on board.

Since Ellen wanted to save and reuse most of the deconstructed materials, debris hauling was insignificant.

We asked Chris to spend extra time and attention to create a single, large material delivery from our traditional supplier, Builders Alliance. At least we could minimize their vehicle trips and not take them for granted.

Similarly, we challenged our Operations Manager Chris Frerichs to focus on a single delivery of tools and equipment, including two additional steel storage lockers for the crew’s tools which would ordinarily be stored in their pickups. He used 30 minutes to prepare and place these two lockers on site, time which wouldn’t have been necessary if we had used their trucks as tool boxes. And no additional vehicle trip was necessary to place these tool lockers.

Our Production Manager, Joe Gillmer, who periodically visits our numerous job sites to check on quality and progress, though committed to Ellen’s challenge, was days away from shoulder surgery. No way could he hop on his bike for this project.

Is this story, then, simply about two carpenters commuting by bike to a three week job site? Not really. It’s more about the time, passion, energy, vision and money that it takes to bring change to any organization’s culture. The need for internal champions; the need for community support; the need for flexibility amidst a team; the need for cooperation between a business and a client; the need for addressing the dual challenges of peak oil and climate change. And yes, it’s about two guys willing to take on something new and different.

Just how experienced were our two cyclists, Chris and Adam? Like so many of us, they both grew up using their bikes to visit friends and do assorted errands prior to being able to drive a car.

Adam’s commute to Ellen’s home, at eight miles each way, proved to be the longest ride of his life. So he went out and bought a $30 used Nishiki road bike prior to project commencement; his existing mountain bike felt inappropriate for this challenge. It was during his college era that Adam mountain biked occasionally yet rarely used his bike as alternative transportation.

Although Adam was concerned about feeling wasted working four 10-hour days at Ellen’s with an eight-mile ride before and after work, he did just fine.

“When I got to Ellen’s house in the morning I actually found that I had more energy than usual! And at the end of my work day I arrived back home feeling fairly normal; not drained as I had feared,” Adam said.

Chris’ prior cycling experience was more substantial. He grew up on a BMX bike, riding dirt trails and hills, and then commuted to work in San Francisco for about four years in the mid 1990s. Once or twice a week he would also bag recreational rides to the coast — about 40 minutes each way. But moving to Washington changed his style; he’s hardly touched his bike.

Our challenge changed this. Chris said he felt invigorated by the rides, which were 5.5 miles each way.

“I felt more awake and alive. And given my home life with my wife and toddler, the exercise was a welcome change! Yes, it took me about 30 minutes a day of additional preparation time to deal with clothing, cycling equipment and tools, and like Adam, I arrived on site with additional energy,” Chris said. “I was ready to have at it!”

And again, like Adam, Chris came back home at day’s end not feeling any more tired than had he driven his pickup each way. Bike riding, simply put, is invigorating.

When I spoke with Chris about his experience on Ellen’s project, his most emotional response was sparked from day one, when he had a run-in with a car driver on that tight, two lane bridge without shoulders or bike lanes. He “took the lane” as he approached the bridge, as allowed by law, but so many drivers simply don’t know this law (or don’t want to know it).

Many a biker will tell you that an agitated car driver is potentially a biker’s greatest threat. So it was here. The driver honked and then pulled over just past the bridge, got out of his car and gave Chris a piece of his mind. (The good thing about a motorist honking at a cyclist is that it means — among other things — they see you. In 99 percent of crashes, the motorist says “I didn’t see him!”). No, the driver didn’t want to hear Chris’ reasoning or defense, or to hear about the law, but nothing more came of it; both moved on.

Chris and Adam used this incident, though, to stimulate their search for an alternative to the bridge. They found it via a slight detour around and below the bridge, allowing them to avoid the bridge at will. Day two and beyond went a lot smoother than this initial day’s flare up.

We accepted Ellen’s offer, prior to commencement, for a private cycling classroom lesson, one very similar to what her office offers our community: everybodyBIKE’s “First Gear Bicycle Class”: rules of the road, laws of the road, commuting hints, equipment preferences, confidence and comfort. She spent two hours with Chris and Adam, along with two other co-workers who wanted to sit in and absorb what they could.

During the class, Chris suggested that our office staff would probably be in a better position to bike commute than our production team, since they wear more standard clothing than our carpenters.

“Actually,” Ellen said, “most people say the opposite: wearing more formal clothing is a bigger barrier to biking.”

What about the social and environmental benefits we achieved as a result of Ellen’s project? First, the hard data:

Chris bike-commuted the 5.5 miles each way for nine work days (20 minutes each way), by bus one day (40 minutes each way; he had a chest cold so he biked to the bus stop, put his bike on the bus, took the bus home along with his bike) and by single-occupancy pickup two days (10 minutes each way).

Adam bike-commuted the eight miles each way for 10 work days (40 minutes each way) and by single-occupancy pickup two days (20 minutes each way).

One diesel truck delivery was made by our local lumber yard, Builders Alliance.

Chris, our Operations Manager, supported the crew by moving materials, tools and equipment, logging 30 miles in our small Toyota Tacoma pickup and an additional 30 miles in our 1-ton Chevy swap-loader. Although he bicycle commutes to our office at times, none of his trips to Ellen’s job site were at all practical by bike. Too bad; he was ready.

Six times Chris biked from Seattle to Portland in Cascade Bike Club’s two-day “STP” ride; four times he did their “Chilly Hilly” ride (33 miles around Bainbridge Island; 2,675-foot elevation gain. Bicycling Magazine named the “Chilly Hilly” “One of Four Classic Rides” in the nation).

All in all, we biked 336 miles. Well … almost. For 336 miles we assumed that Joe, our Production Manager, didn’t have a bum shoulder and was able to bike as well. Call it doctoring the math if you want … we wanted to see how good the numbers could be. Instead of Joe’s actual seven round trips in his small Toyota Tacoma truck, we assumed instead that he biked the four miles each way, spending 20 minutes on his bike instead of 10 in his motor vehicle.

The environmental advantages look like this:

• We eliminated 272 pounds of carbon dioxide (which contributes to global warming)

• We eliminated 1 pound of hydrocarbon (which contributes to smog)

• We eliminated 9 pounds of carbon monoxide (a poisonous gas) from being emitted

• We (company and individuals) saved 14 gallons of gasoline, representing a savings of about $40

What about our job costs? First know that we covered the additional travel costs created by the extra time involved. Ellen paid nothing extra; we covered Chris and Adam’s cycling time. Just how much additional time are we talking about?

• Adam spent 40 minutes extra time per round trip to the site, or 6.7 hours of cycling overall.

• Chris spent 20 minutes extra time per round trip to the site, or 3.3 hours of cycling overall.

• Joe (would have) spent 20 minutes extra time per round trip to the site, or 3.3 hours of cycling overall.

From a single-bottom-line perspective, our labor costs increased by $332 for a project with total hard costs of $8,322. That’s an increase of about 4 percent in total cost.

That said, life is not about single-bottom-line management. Let’s toss in the social and environmental benefits. Yes, more difficult to quantify, but that’s never stopped us. Our efforts created:

• Less traffic and pollution

• Healthier and happier employees

• A happier client

• Longer life expectancy for our trucks

• Less dependency upon petroleum

• A company focus upon better planning in general and fewer trips of any kind

• A new cultural buzz within our company, stimulating conversations about fitness, health and overall well-being

Let’s delve a bit deeper into our cultural change and take a snap shot — today — about three months after Ellen’s project has ended. Are Adam and Chris still biking to work? Are other co-workers embracing alternative transportation? Was this project simply a shot in the dark?

Neither Chris nor Adam has biked to work since Ellen’s project, both of them citing rain, light scarcity and other winter weather issues as their key barriers. And of course, it’s never that simple. Adam was expecting his first child on, or about, February 1. They both enthusiastically look toward spring, and better weather, to hop back aboard their bikes. Chris told me that he’ll bike to work so long as the job sites are within about 30 minutes of his home.

After completing Ellen’s project, we’ve identified another co-worker — Maggie Bates — as our in-house cycling “champion.” Maggie’s taken on the role of spreading the alternative transportation virus throughout our company. An avid cyclist herself, she often does a hybrid commute to work, using a combination of bus and bike; by bike alone her commute would take about 75 minutes, a bit too much for her liking.

Maggie has given presentations about the Smart Trips program to both our design and production staffs. To date, four folks have joined (amidst our total staff of 15): 25 percent and growing.

Also growing is our designers’ use of bikes to make in-town trips to the building department, job sites and other errands. And we hope to further support our bikers by building a bicycle shelter at our office and showroom using natural building methods such as cob, straw bale or cord wood.

This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve helped create cycling infrastructure. Three years ago, in celebration of our 50-year company anniversary, we offered to design and build a covered, 22-bicycle “bikeport” at our local Community Food Co-op. All the labor and practically all of the materials were donated.

An unintended consequence of this gift was that A-1 Builders and the Community Food Co-op were awarded the 2006 Great Feets Award (from the Bellingham Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee during Everybody Bike Month) in recognition of “the beautiful custom-designed and built bicycle parking facility constructed at the North Forest Street store. The prominent location and distinctive style of this bicycle rack make it an attractive invitation to all who see it that bicycle transportation is well supported at this store.”

Amidst the numerous benefits of Smart Trips is a discount card they offer folks who have attained a certain number of alternative trips. And we’re joining the ranks of local businesses that offer these discounts. Ours will be a 50 percent reduction in someone’s first two-hour design session with us.

We’ve also embraced a new cycling policy here. Although we don’t pay our folks for their commuting time by car, we are going to pay for their additional time spent cycling. So if a carpenter’s commute to a job site takes 15 minutes by car and 30 minutes by bike, we’ll pay them for the additional 15 minutes each way. This will hold true when our job sites are located in Bellingham’s city limits; sites beyond this footprint may still be covered at the discretion of management.

What about Ellen’s feedback, after the fact? This was her idea in the first place. From the client’s perspective, what did she feel? Given her tight building lot, more bikes led to fewer motor vehicles, and this was a good thing. And it sure didn’t hurt for our client to be a passionate bike enthusiast. She offered our guys places to change their clothes as well as areas in which to store their bikes during the work day.

Ellen had some further input:

“I think a typical client would easily accept a bike-oriented job site so long as they knew they weren’t paying an additional price to incorporate their use,” Ellen said. In-house, we toyed with offering our clients an optional add-on price to support these this extra travel time, but we decided to absorb this extra cost on our own without asking our clients for this financial support.

Where will the infiltration of this cycling virus end? It’s clearly still infectious. We’ve been studying Web sites such as http://www.bikesatwork.com for work-oriented cargo bikes. We’re reading “Cycling for Profit: How to Make a Living With Your Bicycle” by Jim Gregory. We’re involved with Transition Whatcom’s alternative transportation working group, seeking to identify our local leverage points to lobby for more bike-centric roads.

A further cultural shift within our company is to think about cycling from the moment a client accepts a proposal and says “Go!” We’ve added a line item entitled “discuss the applicability of cycling” to our project commencement checklist we call the “Go Agenda.” Right out of the starting gate we want to incorporate alternative transportation whenever possible.

Yet even when cycling is impractical for a particular project, Ellen’s job helped focus us on being diligent in minimizing the number of vehicle trips no matter which vehicles are being used: eliminate unnecessary material and equipment runs by better planning, carpool our staff to out-of-town jobs as much as practical and minimize the number of dump runs.

Ellen’s project also supports our love of contractors who create a good third of our work, usually because they struggle with how to deal with water infiltration. All kidding aside, be sure you hire local contractors well-versed in flashing and weatherization. Pay for your work once by doing your homework. Spend more time on selecting your contractor than you do in selecting your faucets.

We have an in-house expression: “Pay us now or pay us later.” Low bids populate the bottom of the barrel and that’s where they should stay.

And when you select a builder, go green. They are most likely to entertain an idea such as incorporating cycling into their work. They are most likely to be thinking about life-cycle assessment: using techniques that seek to optimize the life expectancy of that which they build.

Perhaps our boldest message is to think local and green in all aspects of your spending. Combining cycling and contracting in the same breath is simply out-of-the-box thinking. Where else in your world can you promote alternative transportation by simply asking for it?

Ask for the change you want to see in the world. You just might infect someone with a wonderful virus. §