We’ve been discussing the concerns, worries, and fears you have about your construction project. Including construction problems, defects, and building contractors.
This is the last post in series about protecting your interests during the construction process. Whether you’re building new or renovating, if you missed the previous posts you can get caught up here, here, and here.
So why do construction projects have problems? There are two big contributing factors. (There are actually many, many more but we’ll put everything into these two giant buckets for now.)
First, as a contractor, or other professional, it’s just not possible to know everything there is to know about construction. This is why other professions are hired on a project. To help fill in those knowledge gaps.
But that brings about another question. What if one, or more, of the other professionals hired for the project is the problem?
We’ll take that a step further… What if another professional on the job is the problem, but the general contractor doesn’t know it?
Each profession on a job site expects the other trades to know what it’s doing, or to let them know if there are problems that they should take care of during construction.
And that brings us to a key question.
If everyone thinks that everyone else knows what they are doing (and I think we covered enough in these posts to know better); then who is making sure your project is getting done right?
That should get you thinking about things. Maybe you’re thinking “Who is really looking out for my best interests?” or “Who is actually checking to make sure things are getting done right?”
Now that we are pondering all of that. Here is some more to think about…
- If there are problems that need corrected, who makes sure the right professional is the one doing the correcting?
- And who is making sure they know how and understand why it needs to be done?
- Who is determining the work that needs to be done to correct an issue?
- Oh yeah! Don’t forget…Who is checking to make sure the corrections were done properly?
The second thing about construction projects (or any other project for that matter) is that the human factor is always present. And that makes it impractical to push for utter perfection.
Miscalculations and errors will always be present. But, what’s a critical error and what’s not? Who’s making that decision on your behalf? Is it someone with a financial interest in getting the project done? Or is it someone with an interest in getting it done the right way?
Someone’s paying a lot of money to have a project built – that would probably be you if you are still reading this. And I doubt that you are paying to having it built wrong, or with problems that will become apparent down the line. But, you are paying to have it built that way if you DON’T pro-actively protect your own interests.
The issues we’ve covered are all part of why unbiased and continuous due diligence, quality control, and process management are all needed throughout a construction project.
I hope this series of posts has let you know that the concerns and fears you have about your construction project are real.
Knowing your worries are valid is half the battle.
Now you can put measures in place to protect your interests and minimize potential problems with your construction plans.