在近六十年的职业生涯中，肯·斯莱滕（Ken Sletten）在建筑行业发生了重大变化。他的同事们甚至认为他推动了一些范式转变。其中包括快速轨道调度和保证最高价格合同。两者都已成为行业规范。

与Sletten合作超过30年的第10级建筑总裁丹尼斯·吉尔斯（Dennis Giles）说：“他创造了谈判类型的工作。”他说：“他说，与其努力招生工作并与所有者矛盾，'让我们站在所有者的身边，成为他的经纪人。”

In 1956, after he earned a master's of business administration from Stanford's Graduate School of Business, Sletten became a project engineer for a mid-size contractor, Williams and Burrows. During one of his first projects, the 221-unit Sequoias retirement community in Portola Valley, Sletten realized the importance of scheduling when "three of the subcontractors went broke," he says.

因此,民心说他不得不设计一个卫理公会教徒d to rescue the project. "I invented a two-week rolling schedule to manage that job, and in particular the subcontractors who were broke," he says. Sletten also attacked costly and time-consuming punch-list work by insisting that jobs be done right the first time. He would later present this to potential clients as a "zero punch list" approach.

1961年，斯莱滕（Sletten）与另一个威廉姆斯（Williams and Burrows）的老兵鲁道夫（Onslow Rudolph）共同创立了鲁道夫（Rudolph）和斯莱滕（Sletten）的总承包商。鲁道夫（Rudolph）的车库是二人组合的办公室。

At the time, the technology industry—soon to become known as Silicon Valley—was about to explode with growth. Rudolph and Sletten realized that construction would have to quicken its pace to keep up with an industry where products—and the plants that produce them—become obsolete in just a couple of years.

"We basically had to pick up a year on the construction schedule or [our clients] would be behind their own invention schedule," Sletten says.

"It was really obvious that the way people were building buildings at that time, it couldn't happen," he says. "So we started doing things like fast-track construction."

Sletten开始保证价格并使用关键路径方法进行调度，以帮助确保满足施工里程碑。关键是将时间表与每个分包商的合同联系在一起。

鲁道夫（Rudolph）和斯莱滕（Sletten）很快就涌入了工作。承包商为Fairchild Semiconductor，Memorex，AMD，Intel，Hewlett-Packard，Sylvania和Xerox等硅谷公司建造了第一个芯片铺装设施，清洁室和公司校园。吉尔斯说，由于承包商对满足具有挑战性的日程安排，解决困难问题并第一次建立问题的偏爱，许多公司成为回头客。

Later, Apple, Genentech, Scripps Research Institute, Monterey Bay Aquarium and Lucasfilm also became clients. By the early 2000s, annual construction revenue hit $1 billion.

2005年，鲁道夫（Rudolph）和斯莱滕（Sletten）被培训老师（Tutor Perini）购买，斯莱滕（Sletten）短暂退休。但是在2011年，他重新加入了许多前同事，包括吉尔斯（Giles），他们当年离开了鲁道夫（Rudolph）和斯莱滕（Sletten），形成了10级建设。斯莱滕（Sletten）现已在80年代担任第10级顾问委员会的董事总经理。

Level 10 has grown exponentially each year and has $600 million in annual revenue. Giles credits the success to using Sletten's time-tested principles.

"My business plan is to duplicate what Ken did at the original Rudolph and Sletten," he says. "Everything about it was the right way to run a business."