Quality Starts in Contract

To ensure that quality construction will happen on your job, you must mention it in your contract. Simply saying that work will be done to "...industry standards or in a workmanlike manner" is NOT good enough! Spelling out how things will be done in written specifications that are part of the contract is the best way. Provide the actual instructions as to how things go together. These are readily available from the manufacturers and/or trade associations. You can also include simple language in the contract that says something similar to, "...all materials will be installed as specified by the manufacturer and/or trade association that is closely allied to this material group."

When to Inspect

Inspecting for quality needs to be done on a routine basis. In some instances it will be daily, in others it might be weekly. You need to show up at the jobsite to make sure that your interests are protected.

Keep in mind that things are not always perfect at the end of each day. The carpenters may not finish plumbing an interior wall before they leave. You may see it that night and have a hissy fit. Relax. The next morning it probably was going to get fixed by the workers. The time to react quickly with respect to obvious mistakes is when the work is in danger of being covered up or altered by the next sub-contractor. Don't wait for weeks to mention defects. Use some judgment and ask questions. Don't automatically assume a mistake has been made. Bring up defects softly. No one likes confrontations!

Finding a Professional

If you find a professional contractor, you can often significantly lower your anxiety level with regards to quality. Professional contractors want the job done right. They usually have a good quality team of subcontractors. Mistakes can and do happen, but they are few and far between.

The way to find a pro is to look. You need to ask questions, lots of them. I can tell you that people rarely asked me lots of questions during an interview. I assume they based their decision on a gut feeling or hope. That can be dangerous!

Caulking defects and paint splatters are obvious and simple construction defects to spot. But what about the more technical aspects of construction? What is a defect and what is not? The answer is not always clear. To a great degree, there are subjective limitations to levels of quality. It is not like a math problem where the answer is either right or wrong!

Want Protection? - Read!

If you want to make sure that the quality on your upcoming job is the absolute highest, you have to take a pro-active position in the job. What does this mean? It means you need to get educated. Often this is as simple as reading certain sections of the building code. Yes, the building code is a set of minimum quality standards, but some aspects are very important. Another great place to start is to look towards trade associations. There are hundreds of them.

The trade associations have enormous amounts of information about how their products should be installed. For example, the Portland Cement Association has hundreds of publications that tell you how concrete should be ordered and finished. Many are easy to read and cover the most important aspects of the job. The California Redwood Association has fantastic publications that outline exactly how wood siding should be installed so that it lasts for hundreds of years. I could go on and on.

Cost Breakdown Guidelines

If you remember your high school chemistry, you probably recall that you can break down chemical compounds into small pieces. These parts all have a relative value with respect to the original compound. Construction projects are no different. You can break the cost of a new home down to thousands of parts if you have enough time and energy. A more reasonable breakdown would be somewhere in the range of 100 to 200 cost components.

Virtually everyone who builds needs to borrow money. Banks and savings & loans for years have had to place values on new construction in progress. Builders and remodelers who struggle to develop crisp estimates for jobs also need to have a handle on what certain things cost. Over the years some reasonable standards have been developed that allow one to estimate - with a reasonable degree of accuracy - what a particular aspect of construction might cost.

The following values are estimates of what things might cost in your part of the nation. The figures can vary depending upon the region and the total cost of the house. Custom housing figures can vary wildly. For example, a custom home might contain extravagant bathrooms and kitchens that may consume 15 percent of the total construction budget. You need to keep this in mind as you develop costs for your project. The pricing guideline books can help you get closer to an accurate number if you are doing a custom project.

Fine Tuning

You can take the above numbers and continue to break them down. For example, do a breakdown of all plumbing fixtures by room. Do the same with light fixtures.

Different regions have varying building practices. In the Midwest, basements are common. They are rare in the South. As such, the above foundation number would be wrong for a simple slab foundation. Use your common sense.

Residential Cost Guide Publications

Did you know that you can go to most major libraries and get some very cool books that allow you to calculate the cost of different building and remodeling projects? These manuals have been around for years for the commercial construction industry. They were used heavily - and still are - by architects and commercial builders. The manuals break projects down very cleanly into their separate parts. A unit measure cost - usually square foot - is then assigned to each task. The manuals cite labor costs and frequently material costs for a typical task.

The best part is that there are regional and city adjustment multipliers. These numerical adjustment tools allow you to zoom in on the cost for your area. The cost manuals are updated annually so that inflation, supply/demand factors, etc. are all calculated into the final number you look at.

The publishers below have books and cost guides for the residential market. The Means Residential Square Foot Costs: Contractor's Pricing Guide 2004 is a good one that I have used with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The other publishers have fine cost guides as well. I suggest you contact all three of the below companies and ask for a catalogue of their products. The Craftsman Book Company has some fantastic books about residential construction. I own a swell book of theirs called Roof Framing. It is a very technical book about old fashioned roof framing techniques, math, etc. They also publish great books about plumbing, electric wiring and carpentry.

Whatever you do, DON'T bet the ranch on numbers you get from the price guide manuals. They are to be used to get you close to a number, not a drop-dead actual estimate. Do that by getting old fashioned bids!

Allowances

Allowances are for people who are in a rush. These common items in a bid, a set of plans or a contract have caused more misery for people who are building or remodeling than just about any other aspect of construction. Why? Allowances are often unrealistic. The allowance amount listed may not be enough money to purchase the item or level of quality you desire.

You can check the accuracy of allowance items fairly quickly by going to a product showroom. Make a quick list of all the plumbing fixtures you like. Add up the total cost and see where you stand. I think you will find - in most cases - that the allowance is a little stingy.

Take Your Time

A better way to develop accurate costs for a project is to pre-select everything you are going to use or need. This solves two problems: 1. You know the cost of the items. 2. The contractor and sub-contractors can calculate the exact amount of time it takes to install the item(s).

Why is this important? I'll give you a great example. About eight years ago I was awarded a contract for a room addition project. The plans for the job didn't spell out any special notes about door hardware. Well, the customers had lots of money and the wife had exquisite tastes. She went to the door hardware store and came back with a mortise lockset! Yikes! These things take 6 to 8 hours to install vs. the standard 20 minutes for a predrilled tubular lockset you install in most doors.

The bad thing is that the customers didn't feel the need to pay me extra for all the time spent to install the fancy lockset. You could argue both sides of the extra payment issue fairly easily - since the contract said I had to install a lock. I learned my lesson and they got a good deal.

To avoid situations like this in your project, just take the time to pre-select what your are going to buy. You have to do it sooner or later, so take your time up front and save hassles for all involved. You will be able to enjoy your project much, much more if you eliminate the stress of selecting items on a tight deadline schedule.

Surprises

One way to sour a construction project is a surprise or hidden cost. You can take the sting out of surprises several ways. One thing you should do is create a contingency fund for this purpose. Don't tell anyone about this hidden money. It exists only for emergencies.

Another method of avoiding surprises is developing a highly detailed list of job costs. If you are building a new home, you or your builder knows many things must happen. If you list each task and then place a realistic number behind each job, you will virtually eliminate a surprise or cost overrun.

My New Home Construction Checklist is an excellent example of such a list. I have broken down the construction of a new home into a 150+ item list. You can really get a grasp of what is necessary to build a home using this list! This Checklist is available electronically from my website. Just go there and visit the Online Store.

Construction and building costs often are tough to pin down. Contractors can struggle to get accurate numbers. There are many estimating software packages that claim they will help develop crisp numbers, but garbage in equals garbage out. In other words, to get crisp, solid numbers, the estimator needs to know exactly how long it takes to do something under given conditions. This may work well in tract building where one house is just like another, or in manufactured housing situations, but custom building and remodeling cost estimates can be baffling.

Worst Case

It was not uncommon for me to make mistakes during the bidding process. I was the eternal optimist. It always seemed to turn out that I could work faster on paper than in the field. Mud, cold temperatures and other delays can eat into productivity.

One method of calculating costs is to figure a worst case scenario. The problem with this method lies in the fact that the final number may burst a construction budget.

High quality construction companies keep good records. They know how much time - on average - it takes to pour a room addition footer. Or a company knows how many feet of custom exterior wall it can frame in a day. A tile setter knows that he can install more square feet of 8x8 tile than slate in 8 hours.

If you find contractors who keep records like this, they can usually produce solid numbers that allow them to make a fair profit and gives you good value at the same time.