We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Whitney Hill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Whitney, thanks for joining us today. Do you have any advice regarding quality control and maintaining quality as your brand grows?

As our business has grown, we’ve evolved from “Jack of all trade” roles to more specialization. For example, our Project Managers used to handle many pre-construction activities like setting up and releasing purchase orders to our vendors. Now they are focused exclusively on the build, while a new pre-construction team handles job set up activities and purchase orders. This affects quality because each team has a smaller scope of tasks to become skilled at handling. On the flip side, we must work carefully to ensure smooth handoffs.

We’ve also created a series of reports that we monitor to ensure nothing is forgotten on a job. As we handle over fifty live projects at a time, this is an important check for us to keep everything running smoothly. Department managers are in charge of monitoring reports for their own area.

Now that we are significantly larger, we also send out a pre-set series of client satisfaction surveys to make sure each of our clients is experiencing the same high level of service that we aim to provide. This gives us a way to send specific feedback to the relevant departments to ensure we are always striving to get even better at designing & building accessory dwelling units.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

SnapADU is the leading design / build general contractor specializing in construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in Greater San Diego. We also happen to be the most prolific “stick built” general contractor (e.g. not modular or pre-fab) for ADUs in the entire country, with more than 50 live ADU projects currently moving through the phases of design, permitting and construction.

ADUs have come on the radar as California has made it easier to build an ADU. Starting in 2020, regulations have eliminated minimum lot size requirements and many fees. ADUs can be between 400-1200 sqft and up to two stories in many cities. About 60% of clients working with us are building an ADU for a family member, while 40% are building the additional unit to rent out to generate income.

We created SnapADU in 2020 as a partnership between an experienced general contractor and a seasoned business manager. My partner, Mike Moore, had been building new custom homes and handling large renovations in North County San Diego under his company Moore Construction. Meanwhile, I had spent more than ten years in corporate America learning from the best of the best in operations management and process improvement, as well as business strategy and organization. We realized that our skills would allow us to serve a growing demand for homeowners looking to build ADUs.

SnapADU is fully specialized in detached accessory dwelling units. Homeowners can also convert existing space, like a garage, into an ADU, though this is outside the scope of our expertise. We’re different from others in our niche because we are vertically integrated, handling our design, permitting & general contracting in-house with our own employees. In the beginning, we tried to rely more heavily on other companies to handle the plans & permits, but we quickly learned we needed to have visibility & control over the entire process to be able to accurately quote the cost and timeline of a project for our clients.

We also offer over 30 standard ADU plans that homeowners can either build as-is or modify to suit their property & preferences. This speeds up the design process and also allows us to offer a fixed price within the first few weeks of the project. Transparency is a key value for us, so from very first contact with a homeowner, we offer clear pricing information and a free consult to understand property specifics that will impact the budget. We’ve also created design packages that allow the client to select from curated finish options for their ADU.

We’re proud that we have become a source of information for homeowners, whether or not they end up building an ADU with us. Our website is chock full of pricing, process, and regulatory information about all of the municipalities in Greater San Diego, all of which have their own ADU regulations. We love making it more seamless for homeowners to bring their guest home to life.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

About 70% of our new clients find us on Google. We’re proud that our website has extensive content about ADUs that is not available elsewhere. We take an approach of freely sharing information, which is particularly unique in the general contracting world where opacity can often leave homeowners feeling like they don’t have the full story.

To keep our website ranking at the top of many search results, we regularly post new articles on topics of interest, such as ADU build costs, ADUs in the coastal zone, ADUs in HOAs, and renting out an ADU. We also post all of our live ADU projects on our website, plus client stories after the builds are complete. Lastly, our index of ADU floor plans is one of the most extensive on the web, and unique in that we provide pricing for each plan.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

We look for opportunities to empower the SnapADU team to make their own decisions based on company values & goals. In a quickly growing company like ours, we hire highly competent and independent people that we can trust to build out their own part of our business. We’ve involved the team in crafting our policies, processes and procedures so that they are on board with the philosophies underpinning what we are building.

Empowered employees also have the broader context to help us improve and automate the business on their own, allowing us to move faster by working more closely as a team. Productive team interactions bolster company culture and further reduce attrition. The result is a workforce that loves what they do and are eager to support the company’s growth story.

We also follow a hybrid work model where most employees are remote; we don’t have an office. This allows our employees to create a work structure that works best for them, without some of the conventional constraints. We meet regularly via Zoom and have in-person social events once a month to stay in touch on a more personal level.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://snapadu.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/snap.adu/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snapadu
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-hill/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeq8zPndvyRewiZU6oVw-qA/featured
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/snapadu-oceanside

Image Credits
Classic Commercial Tailor & Reach