Hiring your own trades will cost you money and time

I recently worked for a professional who was moving his business up to the Collingwood area, they bought an old building and wanted to renovate it, we were hired to do some of the early work on the building.

Once we were established in our work doing demolition and re-framing the client asked us for other quotes for heating, insulation, flooring, painting and concrete work. There were a couple of things that they didn’t ask us to do and one of them was the electrical. They were bringing an electrical contractor from their former city to do the work. Their former area was over two hours away.

As soon as we heard this we knew what would happen and it did. We finished our work, the clients were in a big hurry to get the place up and running and then the project sat there with nobody working on it for weeks which turned into months.

The client would call me and ask me how I was doing and what was happening up in Collingwood on his project, I would tell him basically nothing. Without electricians nothing can proceed, there were wires in the way, a sub-panel that had to be removed before we could frame any farther and so as far as we were concerned we had left and gone to another job until the electricians arrived to do their work. Since the homeowner had hired the electricians himself from his former town I had no way to talk to them or any pull with them to get them there quicker. It was up to the homeowner.

This is a typical story in the residential construction industry, a contractor is brought in to do some work and is asked to organize certain aspects of the job, the client thinking that they can save some money and keep control of their own project hires one or two trades themselves. Those one or two trades hold up the whole job and end up in the end costing the homeowner more time and money in the long run.

When you don’t have the appropriate trades on the site at the correct time things are done slower and a lot of things end up being done twice because the other trades when they show up late end up having to remove other peoples work to do theirs. This all costs money and time and time is money.

One year later we have completed our part and the place hasn’t opened yet. We haven’t worked there in 10 months and driving by you notice nothing happening for weeks at a time. More and more trades and companies have been brought in from the owner’s former city. There is no general contractor for the project just the owner who has his own work to do.

The moral of this story is that for the little bit of money that you think you are going to save by hiring a trade or two yourself will be wasted in the time and re-work that will have to be done. Let the professionals handle it; let a general contractor do ALL the hiring and organizing for you. In the end you will be happen you did.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.

Being your own general contractor will make your home build take longer

Why being your own general contractor will make your home build take longer.

If you ever drove past a custom home being constructed everyday on your way to work and thought that it seems to take a long time for contractors to build custom homes, try being your own general contractor when you want to build a custom home.

On average, when I see a homeowner general contract their own home it takes twice the time. Let me put that in perspective, the average custom home build that we take on spans about 9 months to 15 months. That means that when a homeowner generals it themselves it will take an average of 18 months to 30 months to build their house.

Timelines are important when building a custom home, if you take too much time to build a custom home you will be exposing the open structure to the elements longer then they were designed to be. Here are some of the issues that you will have with timelines if you make the mistake and try to do it yourself;

• Booking sub-trades. When you are building your own custom home you will have trouble organizing sub-trades. Sub-trades are loyal to contractors because they bring them work year after year. This means that they will give their contractors the first call. If you the homeowner call and ask for electricians you will get them if the contractors don’t need them. Also what you will find is that the sub-trades won’t show up every day because they’ve gotten a call from a contractor to do a fix up or a short job for them. Also a large portion of sub-trades are one man shows or they have under 5 employees. These trades are very good at what they do but they as the owner of the business work on job-sites every day. This means that as a homeowner that doesn’t know their schedule or routine you will have trouble getting a hold of them. Don’t make the mistake in thinking that just because they have a cell phone that you will be able to reach them.

• Paying of sub-trades. If you have ever seen bills submitted by sub-trades you would realize why they work for themselves. Their bills can be awful, hard to read, misspelled, handwritten with no copies and full of mathematical errors when it comes to charging taxes. It’s a fine line when paying sub-trades, if you negotiate too much with a sub-trade or refuse to pay some or all of their money that sub-trade will tell all other sub-trades that you wouldn’t pay. The construction industry is a small community and word travels fast. If you make the mistake with a sub-trade then you could be waiting and looking for sub-trades who will agree to work for you. I have seen some homeowners have to give large deposits up front to guarantee sub-trades will be paid. Sub-trades run their businesses on small amounts of money and if they have any fear of not being paid then they will not take on the job. Good sub-trades always have other work scheduled; never make the mistake of thinking that you are their only job.

• Sourcing of materials and decisions. Nothing will drive sub-trades to leave a job more than a shortage of materials or unmade decisions. Since most homeowners don’t build houses on a regular basis, they have no idea in what order the sub-trades are suppose to be scheduled and what materials they will be required to supply. There are important decisions that general contractors make every day that keep a project moving. These decisions are made on prior history and years of making the same decisions over and over again. If you organize the sub-trades the wrong way it will cost you not just time but money. When you make decisions and don’t realize the consequences of them you can be forcing sub-trades to redo work they have already done. This will cost time and money.

• Building department problems. General contractors regularly receive 1 week delays because of issues that arise when dealing with the local township building department. Homeowners go through a whole other level of scrutiny when dealing with the building department. What it comes down to is liability. With general contractors that the building department knows and have worked with before there is a level of trust, knowing their level of quality. With homeowners, building departments have to make sure that every single thing they do will meet code. This means that the building department will take longer to approve changes and will be stricter on inspections. The other thing that homeowners are not aware of is that township building inspectors make a lot of mistakes. General contractors are always discussing things with inspectors because they see an issue one way and the contractor has to point out what the wording in the code is. A lot of money can be wasted following a building inspectors every want and need instead of challenging them on it.

• Mold. Modern building materials like floor joist are made with glue. Glue helps grow mold. Building envelopes when being framed and open to the weather are known to grow mold fairly well. This will cost the homeowner upwards of 10,000 dollars to have it properly removed and will delay the building process even longer. If you happen to end up with mold on a house inspection and it is placed in the townships file it could come back to haunt you in later years when you go to sell the house. The last thing a homeowner needs is trying to explain a mold warning on an old report to a perspective buyer.
These are only some of the issues that will arise if you try to be your own general contractor; I hope that I have given you some insight into the nightmare you can get yourself into if you try to be your own general contractor when you decide to build a custom home.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

Just hire a general contractor and get it done right

Have you have ever hired a trade like a painter to work at your home and when they were working there you asked them the question “do you know anyone that can install some trim?” There answer if they are a respectable painting contractor should be “actually I know a contractor that can help you with that and they also would be able to help you with some of the other things that I have noticed you need fixed around your home.”

If the answer you get is “sure we can take care of that for you, anything else you want us to do?” then you should start to worry. I true professional painting contractor does not go out of his area of expertise. They do not start renovating bathrooms and putting up trim or fixing wiring or laying hardwood floors. They will have trusted contacts that they deal with all the time and will let them handle it because it’s what they do. In return they will expect that the next time the other contractor is working at someone’s house and needs some painting done they wouldn’t do it themselves they would call the painting contractor.

The reason that all of this works so well is that every trade is able to help every other trade with job leads. The homeowner wins as well as they get the job done by a professional instead of someone that thinks they know what they are doing.

If you pay a cabinet marker to rewire a couple plugs in your kitchen while he’s working on your cabinets and then they burn out later then you GOT WHAT YOU PAYED FOR! You saved a little bit of time and money by having it done by a cabinet marker and now you get to call a licensed electrician to come out and replace your plugs and probably the breaker. Now you have paid for the plugs twice. Hopefully there is no damage done to appliances or electrical fires.

What people don’t understand is that today’s modern houses are extremely complicated. This is one reason why there are so many speciality trades in the residential construction industry. It is also the reason why General Contractors are so important today.

General Contractors don’t employee every trade; they usually employ carpenters to do most of the wood work. The rest of the time the general contractor is organizing sub-trades to do all the electrical, plumbing, H-vac, concrete, communication systems and half a dozen other things. They don’t just organize them they instruct them on what has to be done, where it needs to be done, what it should look like when it is done and what other sub-trades they are going to have to work with to achieve this.

If you simply trust a sub-trade to do a job that isn’t in their range of normal work then you are asking for a lot of trouble and you could end up spending a lot more money than you think. Don’t just let anyone work on the important parts of your home just because their conveniently already there.

Remember you hired that painter because they were good at what they do, painting! So don’t make the mistake thinking that they can do everything else just as good. Hire a professional for every part of your house or make it easier on everyone involved and get a general contractor to do it for you.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

General Contracting what does this mean?

General Contracting what does this mean?
This is one of the most asked questions by people that read my blog. I decided when I started this blog that I would try to answer everyone’s questions to the best of my abilities.

So the question is what does General Contracting mean?

From my point of view, it means a company that manages and constructs residential and/or commercial construction projects. A general contractor is a construction company that builds and manages construction projects for their clients.

A few things about a general contractor that you should know;
• It is there job to construct the building to the best of their abilities by following the local building codes and the approved drawings.
• A general contractor is hired by the owner of the project or someone working on their behalf.
• A general contractor is responsible for all safety standards and the following of all safety procedures on the site.
• A general contractor will use their own employee’s or qualified sub contractors to complete the project.
• A general contractor is responsible for all budgeting, bill payment, sub contractor payment and change orders.
• A general contractor is to make sure that all appropriate inspections by building officials are completed and approved.
• A general contractor is responsible for quality of work and materials that are used by their employee’s and the sub contractors.
• A general contractor is responsible for creating and adhering to a schedule weather, client and sub contractor permitting.
• A general contractor is responsible for all warranties that need repairs after the project has been completed.
• A general contractor must be properly insured against any loss or damage that could occur.
• A general contractor is responsible for getting and keeping any appropriate licensing or accreditation that is required to construct the building project. For example; to build new homes you have to be a licensed new home builder in certain parts of North America.

If you are planning to build a new house you should hire a general contractor. They will help you have your plans drawn up, they will help you get approval from the local government to build the house and be able to give you a proper budget on what they believe that the house will cost you to construct.
They will organize the whole job, the material, the workers, the inspections and the timeline of when this will all happen. They will consult with you as the building is being constructed on any over runs, under runs, changes and upgrade options that you may need.
They will organize onsite and offsite meetings with you the homeowner and give you timelines of important decisions that you will have to make to keep the project moving along.
They make sure that your vision of what you want your custom home to look like will come to life and that you stay in the budget that you have approved.
A general contractor will make sure that when they are done all they do is hand you the keys so that you can move in and enjoy your new home.

I hope this answers the question of “what does it mean to be a general contractor?”

If anyone requires more information feel free to email me or post a commit and I will get back to you.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.