How many times have you read in the newspaper about people waiting endlessly for the contractor or architect to complete building their homes? How many people do you personally know who were misled by the contractors regarding the correct date of delivery of their homes? If you follow the independent home building industry, even distantly, then you would know that delay in the home building process is one of the most notorious diseases the industry is infested with.
People have almost become comfortable with the fact that delay by the contractors is a universal phenomenon and is bound to happen and there is nothing they can do about. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The field of civil engineering has been constantly evolving with each passing day, with state of the art technology & machinery supporting the processes involved in construction. At the same time if you take into account that project management too, as a practice, has leaped out of the old fashioned “pen and paper” approach and landed into the computers as simple, easy to use software then suddenly it becomes hard to fathom the fact that people still have to deal with the problems of delayed home building process.
If you minutely monitor any home construction process, the problem will boil down to the easy approach the contractors or architects take towards these projects. These contractors don’t care about the hard earned money which people invest in building their homes or the fact that they will still be paying the rent of their rented home till the time their new home is being built. Most of the times the delay in the the home construction projects is not caused due to any technical difficulties but rather due to general management problems such as slow speed of decision making, poor alliances & vendor relations, delay in third party consultation, unavailability of experienced labour, poor productivity of workers, improper communication and bad project management & scheduling efforts.
You can save yourself from the seemingly never ending wait of getting the keys to your newly built home by keeping in mind the following points while choosing the contractor or architect to build your new home with:
Ask your contractor/architect to sign an agreement:
It's always beneficial to do a background check on the contractor/architect. Check for the time taken by them to deliver their past projects. It's even better to talk to their past clients. Ask the contractor if they are willing to sign an agreement regarding the due date of the delivery of the house. You can ask for compensation from the contractor if the possession of the home is delayed after the stipulated date.
Meet with the project management team:
It will be better if the contractor has a proper project management system and a team in place. This will minimize the chances of improper project management efforts from the contractor’s side. Meet with the project management team and get an idea about how they manage the home construction timelines, whether they have a software in place to do so or do they follow the old school approach of an experienced professional overlooking the whole process.
Hire a contractor/architect which provides you an integrated offering:
Its always better to hire a contractor or architect which provides you an integrated offering across multiple fields such as engineering, design, architecture, planning, compliance, etc. It’s can be hard to find a contractor or architect like this as they usually like to subcontract most of such work to other professionals rather than having an in-house team, or worse, don’t take professional help at all. Sub-contracting the work to different professional teams creates a lot of problem in scheduling and maintaining proper communication & collaboration between them. It adds a lot of variables to the equation of home building which with time turn into bottlenecks disturbing the whole timeline. On the other hand, if a contractor has an all inclusive team it brings about a divine synergy where the work is smooth & on time and the client receives a complete hassle free experience in its true form.
Hire a contractor/architect which handles government approvals:
Believe it or not, but getting all the relevant approvals from the government and complete proper documentation, in itself, can be a real time consuming task which can delay your home building process if you have to do it yourself. It’s always better if your contractor can do this for you. This will save your much coveted personal time and your home building process can start on time.
We sincerely hope that following these points which save you from being the victims of the horrendous ordeal of waiting to shift to your newly built home of your dreams. We know that no list is perfect and all inclusive. If you have any points which you want to add to these then you can post those in the comments below, if we like them we will add them to the list. You can also share your own experiences or of those you know who have gone through or are going through similar problems.