About Builders, Buildings, Mavens and Everything in Between

by Engineer Reuven Katz

I  regularly lecture for building contractors and often dedicate a part of each lecture to the topic, "Finishing in Construction Work" and it's effects on the contractor-buyer relationship. In a recent lecture at a contractor’s meeting I lectured  (as I often do) that the contractor should be attentive to the clients'  complaints  because  a.) You can learn a lot from your client and get information that does not flow through the company’s hierarchical channels,  b.) You mustn't let a customer go away dissatisfied and upset; “The customer is always right”! policy,  (though, personally I do not  unreservedly believe in the slogan). In one of the first rows sat an engineer listening attentively, occasionally nodding  her head in agreement to what I was saying..

A few months later, a client called my office to solicit an opinion regarding a new apartment she had bought. Teary-voiced she told me about the terrible way she had been treated during the  process: She was not allowed to write down on  the protocol defects she could see with  just a glance. At the end of a very  tiring argument which ended in tears from the part of my client, the later took the document of delivery, refusing to sign her name on it and tore it to shreds.

You guessed right! It was the very same engineer who  had previously sat listening to my lecture and nodding her head to everything I said.

I attach the utmost importance to the contractor-buyer relationship and see it as a vital part of the quality control system. The contractual attitude and proper rules of buying and selling (the profits from which eventually go back to the pockets of their owners). Therefore, I have seen fit to dedicate this article, intended for contractors, to  matters involving construction’s defects. However, these naturally belong to other disciplines, namely, law and communication, which can also affect the quality of the final product; the contractor's relationship with his  customer's, his reputation as a result of all these and at the end of course profits.

If I were asked to rank in order of importance the types of defects found in private construction in Israel, I would point out the finish as the second in importance, after dampness.

You don’t have to be a professional to discover defects in the finish; even the average Joe can notice them and proclaim: “Look how crooked these walls are! There isn’t one strait wall here!” And that is only one of the myriad complaints voiced by tenants: deviations in the floor lines as a result if imprecision during frame construction, patches and waves in the plaster, unfinished processing, corner cuts, crooked lines, curved edges, excess plaster and whitewash stone covering, panels at varying distances and or at a nonuniform height and or overly protruding and or not worked, differences in the level  and height of adjacent tiles, lack of cutting and matching beside door jambs or around floor blocks, sloppy mosaic castings, bulges in ceramic covering from the wood fillets around windows and doors, insufficient distance between the door jamb and perpendicular partition, so much so that it is impossible to open the door all the way and requires dismantling of panels, poor incomplete paint job, exposing wood fibers, or painted walls with brush hairs and paint drips; the lack of electrical outlets, outlets that are not firmly imbedded in the wall and the same regarding lighting sockets in the ceiling. Water piping laid in a way that makes it inaccessible for maintenance (mainly in plastic piping); the closeness of water piping in the wall, preventing the proper treatment of plaster, whitewash or completion of ceramic covering (seen mainly in connection to the toilets that are left exposed therefore absorbing excess of plaster and preventing maintenance). Discrepancies  in the heights of sink batteries and taps, incorrect inclines of kitchen counters preventing proper drainage, the lack of scaling on counter edges, a short counter that is not embedded in the wall enabling water to seep into the cabinets below. The lack of lining beds around the windows on the outside exposing backings or and missing of defective scaling allowing water to seep in. Defects in the steel security door and much , much more... To top it all - the filth piling in the apartment at the time it is transferred to the customer not to speak of toilets smeared beyond belief!

There’s a good reason I’ve bothered to include the above “boring” list. On the surface, it would appear that I am referring to picayune details that do not appear in an engineer’s published professional opinion in order not to sound petty. However, these details have weighty cumulative significance.

The level of the finish makes an impression not only on the apartment buyer, and his friends and acquaintances, but also on the engineer who comes  to inspect it,

the finish leaves “fingerprints” which gives an indication of the contractor’s basic attitude, and just as meticulous is the trademark of  a good contractor, you can be sure a sloppy job is a sign of a careless one.

If a contractor disregards a tenant’s small complaint, it is liable to create conflicts whose damage to the contractor will be great. All too frequently a tenant turns to the on-site manager with an ostensibly insignificant matter and is answered thus: “What are you talking about? Have you ever seen anybody do it better? I’ve been in this business for twenty years and no one’s ever complained to me about that before!” The tenant who is pedantic and disturbed (not mentally, but rather by the slipshod job that is upsetting him, especially after he has spent his hard-earned money to buy that apartment) continues to call attention to the matter without being responded to. Distraught,, he turns to expert to get his opinion and most likely the latter will unfurl a professional and sometimes even nosy list of defects. Along the way, the tenant (or the supervising engineer will recruit additional disgruntled tenants and in no time at all, the contractor will find himself with a lawsuit on his hands.

Eventually the contractor will be forced to repair the defects or compensate the tenants on account of them. The question is: why didn't he do it before? Why did he let the matter result in law costs and lawyer fees, thus damaging his reputation, and raised blood-pressure on both sides? As experienced as I am. I can’t for the life of me figure out what causes a contractor to be so flippant when it comes to the finish. If his main goal is to profit from his work, he should care about the finish: after all a sloppy finish only causes him to lose money.

A contractor who strives to produce a good finish will:

1.   Pay attention to detail during the planning stage in order to avoid complications during the implementation stage.

2.   Increase supervision during the implementation stage and postpone the final payment to subcontractors until after quality control and proper completion of the work have been carried out.

3.  Instruct the workers at all levels to pay heed to tenant’s complaints, organize a system of reporting (in writing) and manage a well-organized file for each tenant until all problems raised have been solved.

As I have stated before, I don’t believe that the customer is always right, but  I most definitely believe that he is entitled to have his claims looked into. If they are completely unfounded, the contractor doesn’t have to get all panicky because of the pressure being exerted on him by the tenant. If the last’s complaints are well founded, then the contractor must do all ha can to satisfy the customer without further delays. When it comes to an expensive product, such as an apartment, the constructor must show understanding towards his customer’s high level of expectations and sensitivity to defects and do   the utmost to make the finished product conform to the promotional presentation, including technical specifications.