Scott Johansson wants customers to appreciate the quality work he has done for them, yet he also wants them to forget him.

“If I do an installation and the customer never has cause to think of me again, that customer becomes my greatest asset,” he says. Johansson, owner of Alta Perc Testing in Heber, Utah, never wants to be called back to a job. By investing time to analyze and understand a situation, and then designing a solution to meet the needs, Johansson makes sure his systems perform for the long haul.

His business philosophy seems to have been formulated in a reverse mode: He defined what he didn’t want to be known for, crystallized those thoughts, then went the opposite direction. Defining and excluding failure has moved Alta Perc Testing to success.

From a base in Heber, about 35 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, the company works in three counties in about a 50-mile radius. About 60 percent of the firm’s onsite business consists of repairs, and the balance is installations for new construction.

More home time

Johansson came relatively late to the onsite profession. He held a high-pressure, long-hours, holiday-busy job as executive chef in a major conference hotel, supervising as many as 100 employees. But after missing too many holidays with his family and missing being home to watch his kids’ growing-up years, he decided that wasn’t the life he wanted.

“I wanted something I could do by myself,” he says. About the time he reached that conclusion, he found someone who wanted to use a government grant to install a high-pressure irrigation system. “So, I leased a backhoe and did the work that needed to be done,” he says. As a result, people who were having problems getting onsite system permits and general building permits began to seek his services.

“I went to a conference to learn about these systems before installing the first one,” Johansson says. That led him to attend other training events, where he learned about newly emerging onsite technologies. Not being shy, he asked regulators lots of questions. “One of those regulators took the time to show me how to do it right,” he says. When finally prepared to do it right the first time, he took on his first installation job — about a dozen years ago.

Ceffers and monbackers

Johansson has seen installers return to sites, “donating” thousands of dollars of labor and machine time to repair a $2.50 part that was not installed correctly. He is so focused on doing the job right the first time that he has coined two terms.

“When I do a job right from the start, I never build a ‘ceffer,’” he says. “A ‘ceffer’ happens when you look across a job site and say it all looks great ‘ceffer’ that pipe joint that was glued but not primed.” His job sites are “ceffer”-free.

“Monback,” meanwhile, is what customers expect an installer to dowhen there is a problem with the work. “Ceffers” generate “monbackers.”

A key insight Johansson brings to his business is that systems or components do not fail in times of diminished use. “Things fail when they are stressed — at Christmas, Thanksgiving or during large family celebrations,” he says. “Dealing with a ‘ceffer’ on Christmas is the last thing I want to be doing.”

He acknowledges that paying close attention and using quality materials and techniques add to the price of a job. He operates at the top of both scales and, fortunately, he finds that price has not scaled back demand for his work: “Quite the contrary.”

Quality assurance

Johansson has no full-time em-ployees. His wife, Jennifer, does the company’s bookwork and accounting. Other than that, he relies on casual day laborers with whom he has long-standing relationships. Leaving nothing to chance, he works side by side with them, continually building their skills and confidence.

“On my job sites, good enough is not good enough,” he says. “It must be 100 percent right every time. Because of this, I’ve been told I’m not the easiest person to work for.” In addition to mentoring, Johansson is the quality-control person on each job site. “I work side by side with my men,” he says. “There is no task I will not do, and they respect that. Likewise, I know their skills and strengths and make assignments that match task to talent.”

Johansson pursues at least two strategies to set himself apart from his competition. One is doing it right, and the other is selectively steering away from some tasks. “I am fully qualified and properly credentialed to perform service work on all of the advanced treatment systems I install,” he says. “However, I have chosen not to perform service work.”

He believes the time is not yet right for management services because regulations are extending the service intervals for advanced treatment systems. “The after-installation service interval increases as each particular system demonstrates its successful performance,” he says. That diminishes long-term income opportunities.

Johansson contracts with septic pumpers on certain jobs, such as pumpouts that precede repairs he is making. He provides the pumpers with a written service standard to follow. “I want to see the condition of the tank before and sometimes during the pumpout process,” he says. “I am there for my customer.”

Niche in inspection

One area that appeals strongly to Johansson is inspection of onsite systems, both as a service to homebuyers and as an opportunity to identify problems he can solve. Using a protocol he created, Johansson succeeds through attention to detail and a willingness to dig deeper and learn all he can about a system’s history and current performance.

“My inspections begin with a thorough homeowner interview,” he says. “That is just the first step in the discovery process.” He tracks down health department records to learn site and soil details and to be sure that what is installed is in fact what was permitted. Pumpers with knowledge of the system’s history are also on his contact list. He routinely asks them: What did you see and what did the system tell you?

“Two of the most common problems we see are collapsed or settled building sewers or inlet connections,” he says. Sloppy installation contributes to those failure points. County records usually identify the system installer.

Johansson probes and on occasion digs into absorption areas to understand subsurface conditions. He believes the void spaces between pieces of aggregate are not storage space but an interconnected channel for air circulation.

Judicious investments

To stay lean, Johansson owns no dump trucks or other maintenance-intensive equipment. His modest, job-focused fleet includes a Bobcat 763 skid-steer, a Cat 416B backhoe, a Komatsu PC200 trackhoe, and a 2008 Ford F-350 pickup that hauls parts, pieces and hand tools. “My next acquisition will be a mini-excavator that I can tow behind the pickup,” he says.

Having aggregate delivered eliminates the need for dump trucks, and it also forces accurate purchasing and job planning. He depends on others to move the backhoe and trackhoe. When a job is done, the machines are moved to the next job site, not back to his yard.

Trading equipment ownership and scheduling challenges for lower overhead has brought Johansson greater control of his capital resources. His precision eliminates “ceffers” from his job sites and lets him avoid costly and reputation-busting “monbackers.”

In an industry where digging holes is easy, Johansson enjoys success at the high end of every scale. He measures success by never having to tell a customer, “I’m sorry.”