More often than not, it’s the “oops!” that sidetracks remodel projects, resulting in cost overruns and lost time. Even the most intelligent and talented people (homeowners as well as the design and construction professionals) overlook simple errors and omissions.  Whether it’s in the up-front research phase, while producing the drawings, in the final cost estimate or in the legal contract-for-services, these “Oops!” moments can be costly.

And the stories always end in, “We never knew.” “We thought that he/she was responsible for that.” “We didn’t think that this pertained to us.” “We thought we were in conformance.” or “We had no idea!”

Case-in-Point #1

In our last home remodel the contractor included exterior and interior painting in the project schedule, but omitted that same line item in the final cost estimate. Came time to call in the paint contractor and, low and behold, there was no record of him having submitted any estimate to the contractor. While this may seem like a small oversight, it was not a small amount of money. Our contractor offered to take full responsibility; providing the service ‘free of charge’. However, since we were at the end of the project, with no prior hassles or errors, we agreed to split the cost.

Consider this…

In hindsight, had we taken the time to pay a third party (attorney, architect or contractor) a small amount of money to review the final cost estimate and schedule we might have avoided this very problem.

Case-in-Point #2

John and Mary Doe were undertaking a re-landscaping project. In their initial talks Mary told John, an architect, that she totally trusted his design sense and that he should move forward with hiring the landscape architect and drawing up the plans. John hired one of his colleagues (Let’s call him Jack!), someone with whom he had worked closely with on many of his own building projects.

When the conceptual plans were completed, Mary was not pleased with the design of the back yard and John had to ask his friend to re-work the plans. Since John and Jack were long-time friends, Jack was offering his services at a greatly reduced cost. The resulting changes and re-work caused John embarrassment and put stress on his and Mary’s relationship.

The story doesn’t end here…Working drawings were completed and the landscape contractor went to work. The day the back yard concrete patio was poured was not a good day for John. Mary was not at all happy with the patio. All construction was halted. John, Mary, and Jack  re-worked the design, met with the contractor and selected a new material for the patio. At the end of the day, the back yard was beautiful; the patio a jeweled centerpiece.  John said to me later…”It turns out that Mary was ‘right on’ in all of her ideas, from the scale of the patio, to the selection of materials.”

Consider this…

Never assume that your partner (or any key stakeholder) doesn’t have his/her/their own vision of the end product in mind—before the drawing begins! Mary abdicated her right to give important input up-front, which caused added stress in the relationship between the professionals as well as between John and Mary. Had the couple taken time to share ideas on design and the final outcome, and come into sync early on, the overall experience could have run much more smoothly.

Note*  Next post will address the topic of ‘hiring a friend’!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 11:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.