10 Lessons - Part 7 - Quality Checks
Hi, and welcome back to part 7 in our 10 part article series on the 10 things I have learnt about property development, while navigating construction and property investing in South Africa.
For this article I want to touch on the importance of checking your builders' work, or getting a professional to assist you to do so. It's only with checking in often, that you are able to catch the problems early, and then resolve them before they become too costly, or worse be non-conformant to the building code. Contractors and builders take short-cuts, and it is up to you to ensure that the builder is producing good quality work.
Have you ever walked into a bathroom, and there is something very obviously wrong, like the bath is placed along the wrong wall. Or the brand new kitchen counter top has been placed with the sink hole cut out in completely the wrong position. When these things happen the contractor may first try to deny there is a problem, but when they finally agree there is an issue, it is generally followed by the words, "its going to cost this much extra to fix the problem that we've just created."
The point is to not be shy and check in on the contractor often, unless there's a professional assisting to manage the project on your behalf (like me), its up to you to make sure that builder is building an investment to be proud of.
Being able to read the building plans, and making sure the builder can read building plans, is crucial, because when the error can be shown to the builder off the plan, it's less likely that there will be a dispute over the claim and, he would be required to repair that work at his own cost, as it is his fault. Generally, the smaller the builder being used for the project, the more effort will have to put into checking their quality and pace of work. Make sure it is made known upfront that any incorrect work will have to be redone at their own cost. It's been my experience that no matter the size of the project, many builders will often make assumptions, based on past work experience, to complete the build. That is to say that they might build "how they know how to build", which is not necessarily correctly, or to the specification provided by the building code or professional architect or engineer. Even on multi-million rand projects, contractors are found to not follow with the specifications and drawings provided, and it ends up costing the project, client and the contractor due to the cost of the remedial work required.
In my work I have seen examples of this, such as where a lady trusted her friend the builder to build a set of flats on the back of her yard. He started to build the flats and got up to roof height when he suddenly stopped building and disappeared with all of her money. She called us in as professionals to get advice on how to complete the project, but we could not give her good news. First of all there were no building plans, and secondly from the moment we looked at the building work that had already been done, we could see there were problems with the construction as the walls were already starting to form massive structural cracks. The building would have to be completely demolished and redone. She had lost all of her money..
An individual property investor generally does not have knowledge of all of the construction processes required to bring a development project into reality, especially when it comes to undertaking the correct checks and measures. The bigger the development, the more professionals need to be involved to make sure the project runs to plan, specification and within budget. We only know what we know, don't get caught out with things at the last minute because of not getting the right advice and assistance.
There you have it, part 7 of the 10 lessons I have learnt about developing property through being a project manager. I hope that you have gained some insight from this article that will help you to make more informed decisions on your next building project.
Be sure and keep an eye out for my next articles on the remaining lessons, and leave a comment with any questions or topics you would most like to hear about next. You can also sign up to our mailing list and receive our articles direct in your inbox so you never have to miss an issue.