My wife and I both have a business background and are executives at large employers in the corporate world. That means we’re not so easily fooled – but we had (had) rather moderate knowledge on the subject of building.
The characteristic of otherwise usually sharp negotiators and skilled purchasers is – and it’s incredibly hard for me to believe this is just coincidence – a significantly frequent trait of owners who pay at least financially for DIY contracting lessons, as well as (I almost want to say “comorbid”) ...
Our house was finally planned by an architect up to the building permit. From there, we organized everything ourselves.
... so the scope of the architect’s planning ends with performance phase 4 – not even phase 5 at least! – and the subsequent awarding without the helmet and harness of performance phases 6 and 7 :-(
According to the architect, the quality of the trades so far is also very good (we just finished the interior plaster).
So the architect only sits out phases 5 to 7 and then participates again in phase 8?
We have conducted countless consultation talks with craftsmen for the individual trades and mostly decided on the high-quality execution of the trade. Usually, we proceeded like this: we got advice from a craftsman with a very good reputation and had an offer made.
This is delicate insofar as it can lead to parameters that are unfortunately not taken into account during planning (you don’t have to make it such a textbook example of a deterrent as with his “let’s-see-what’s-happening stair hole”). And the “countless consultation talks” are probably only a very slight exaggeration that you first need to be able to afford (time is money or something, plus you also need a lot of time to possibly read up on know-how first).
Afterwards, we took the items from the offer (without prices) and sent them to other possible providers for the same trade. There, depending on the trade, we held another 2–3 consultation talks and refined the scope of the trade until we precisely knew what we wanted. In the end, we had 2–5 offers per trade. We didn’t always choose the cheapest but rather the one with the best mix of competence, price (and honesty).
You almost behaved commendably regarding the number of offers. It is significantly important that the providers can realize they are not being held in a “counteroffer marathon.” Equally important is also ...
So far, we have had significantly fewer problems than our neighbors with general contractors. With problems, the craftsmen are also much more accessible than with neighbors with general contractors (they squeeze the prices, take the cheapest if in doubt, and the craftsmen are frustrated because of too small margins).
... that they do not get the impression the client wants to hold court on the backs of the craftsmen, who then have to starve on dry bread. You apparently are the client type of :-)
We have a hillside house with 3 floor slabs (staggered construction) and top equipment.
That might be quite nice to show excerpt-wise for illustration, e.g. – please link here – in the house pictures thread 14011.
(e.g. passage into the slightly downward-shifted floor was only 2 meters high due to the of the upper floor
Just an upper floor with one floor slab certainly also strains my imagination quite strongly without pictures ;-)
It’s time-consuming, but in my opinion, with the necessary business acumen and motivation, self-contracting is always better than a general contractor.
Not only the house, but you apparently are also not exactly the type “role model for everyone to copy.”
We gave everything to a single GC, who is then responsible for the entire project. Alone for the reason that you only have one contact person if anything is wrong. When a problem or defect occurs somewhere, trades tend to say “not my fault,” according to our experience during the first build. And then I don’t care who’s making excuses. The GC is responsible, and they have to ensure it is fixed, and luckily in our case, they do.
That, in turn, is – with the small fine exception of the lucky find, unfortunately as with Mr. Rossi – a prototypical example of the motivation to go the GC route. And GCs aren’t per se “wrong,” only the widespread custom to commission them
without tendering.
Despite having a civil engineering diploma in the family (stepfather), we did not go for individual contracting as at the time when we started it was impossible to get companies for the individual trades. That only worked through the network of a GC who fully uses the capacities of the companies. Today, almost 1.5 years later, I’m rather back to individual contracting.
In your case, however, everything may have gone well (so far). But if construction defects occur, you first have to clarify the question of liability. Depending on the damage, that can become a big problem. With a GC, it is “one face to the customer.” Also regarding warranty later. And although we have 5 or 6 in our circle of friends and acquaintances, back then they all said we should rather start with a GC at the moment.
That’s the second, just as classic plea along the same lines (I have grayed out one sentence with a question mark).
Two of the architects even built themselves with a GC but took over the supervision themselves. [...] What I want to say is that there is no model solution and it also takes some luck.
That’s how it is:
a GC must always be viewed as a contractor who naturally can never check itself from the client’s side with impartiality.
One of them even has ongoing litigation with his GC due to massive defects on his special windows.
This was already shown here (four, five?) years ago by : that GCs rather own the “08/15” domain, require stricter control for “08/15 de Luxe / 7016,” and pose an increased risk for “4711.”