The underworld of Construction: Final Part

Wrong professionals

Continued from part 5

This friend who doubles up as a past customer was rather excited when he called me. He wanted me to pass by his site and see the house he was constructing. From my bust schedule one of the Saturdays I managed to squeeze in some minutes and passed by the site.

From a far the maisonnette looks brilliant, a very eye catching roof and the outer walls were very well done. The guy was not on site at the time I got there but I decided to just get in and view. My eagle eyes were quick to note that the workmanship was superb. My sharp eye further started to see some serious design flaws. The lounge door was positioned at the middle of the lounge rendering the usable space minimal. The lounge was sunken and I quickly realized that the step was too big between lounge and dining. The stairs were done well but there was a huge space, sort of a corridor which again seemed unusable. The worst thing I saw was in the master bedroom. The was a very tiny window despite the room being humongous. Inside the shared bathroom, almost everything was wrongly positioned; the bathroom was one long one and for you to access the water closet, you had to pass the showering area. Obvious mistake is that when one person takes a shower and another person wants to use the toilet, then you must go through the wet area before you reach it. I could go on and on and write about a very long snag list but the long and short of it is that the design work was really poor.

Just before I finished going round the house, the guy appeared together with another dude whom I suspected was the foreman. Upon introductions I realized that the other dude was actually the ‘architect’. In quotes because he later told me that he is originally a structural engineer though he had learnt some design work in his line of business. The puzzle was solved. Here is a structural engineer masquerading as an architect. That explained why the design work was piss poor and the workmanship superb. I realized how we fail before we even start a project. WRONG PROFESSIONALs.

Like that architect who is a one man show is a common scenario. He convinces you that he can not only design the house, but he can also give you a Bill of Quantities (BoQ). He also convinces you that he can play the role of the structural engineer. Heck, he is even very comfortable doing interior design work. Haiyaa, plus he also wants to supply you with materials. I once met this fellow called Mike who talks non-stop; akin to a radio with new batteries. You see he claims to have the answer to all your problems. He knows where to source for everything and anything and he is an architect by profession. And so I asked him, what is your specialty?? I obviously never took him serious.

Where do we get it all wrong?

1.    Let the architect design the house and carry out site inspections to ascertain the quality of work. Nothing more.

2.    Let the structural engineer advise you in as far as the structural issues are concerned. He is a very important professional otherwise your structure could one day come down, if not during construction.

3.    Don’t bring over your relative and assume that they will play the role of clerk of works when they understand nothing about construction. The learning curve is too steep.

4.    And those junk-of-all trade fundis who claim they can do mason work, carpentry, fittings, roofing, plumbing and all manner of works are suspect.

5.    Never ever go for quacks, their costs could be tempting but the price you may end up paying maybe too much. Like that friend of mine whose roof was leaking. Can you imagine he was forced to bring the entire roof down… I once told him that he was like that man who passed several dogs on his way to being bitten by a goat.

Enough of this construction stuff. I hope that we have all learnt something.

We shall shift gears and get back to interesting business concepts. In the next post we shall talk about the powers of a good name…how to profile your customers. They say 'if you want to sell to everybody, you'll most likely sell to no-one'...and other business concepts that will assist us become better business people and investors.