It has been 2 years since we have been writing articles and making videos to help and educate people. The main purpose of these videos and articles was to help those people who are building their house by themselves or getting in constructed by a contractor and to let them know the key factors that they need to keep in mind while constructing or getting the house constructed by a builder. Another key factor of these articles and videos is that the client should know their cost of construction before starting and during their construction. After these videos and articles people started approaching us and started sharing their issues and concerns with us. Team Overcs keeping in mind the distress of people started to offer them free online technical consultancy along with a free site visit. We wanted to update you on the site visits we did and the issues we found while doing our visits and wanted to guide you on how we can get rid of the these issues and technical blunders.
While studying our cases we found out that there are mainly 3 issues that are commonly faced by clients.
- Value of Money
One of the issues being faced by the clients are that they are not getting the quality of work they are paying for. Often contractors and builders charge clients for premium plus grade and construct economical grade. Hence clients are not getting what they are being charged for.
- Technical Blunders
Due to lack of technical staff and skilled labour people face a lot of technical errors and blunders. Some of the main issues we found in almost every site was that the walls were not at 90 degrees, the doors were not on the same height, roadmap/sequence of work was not correct i-e which work has to be done at what stage?, lack of workmanship, misuse of good quality material due to inexperienced labor, using poor quality material on recommendations of local contractors who in most of the cases have running commission systems with material suppliers/agents/dealers etc.
- Financial Uncertainty
Clients have no idea how much will their house cost them as a result it causes significant delays due to uncertainly of funds and line of work. They’re not told that this is the amount of money they will require to construct their house so they can arrange the funds accordingly.
The main reason for all these issues to arise is the client’s pre construction research. It is client’s duty to find the right builder. Meet different builders and compare not just their rates but also their scope of work and bill of material. It is strongly recommended to visit their ongoing projects to get an idea of how they work. For instance, if there are 10% good builders out there it is your responsibility to reach out to them.
Here we will give you 3 main steps that will help you finalise your builder and finally select one for your house construction.
First of all a client needs to get at least three quotations from different builders. Please keep in mind to only short list the builders that are willing to give a written and detailed quotation. The quotation should include the following three major points:
- It should mention the quality, the brand name of the material that will be used in the construction and its price range.
- Secondly it should mention details regarding the quality of work that will be done for instance, mixing ratios, thickness of slab etc.
- Third and most important point should be the builder’s scope of work. A detailed scope of builder should be mentioned in the quotation, for instance it should be clearly mentioned that during grey structure what the builder will build and what will not be in their scope. Some builders do not include water proofing, tanks and outside covered area works and inform the client after the house construction has started and create an unpleasant situation.
It is very important that the client visit the builder’s ongoing projects to get the idea of their labours and their quality of work. The client should also take feedback from their current or previous clients and ask them how their experience went with them.
Builders that fulfil all the above requirements should then make a written, detailed and legal contract that provides a financial security and safety of the client and the builder. We hope clients will not have to face problems with the builders that they final through this criteria.
