Who asks the builders also gets an answer

I know both. We built a prefabricated house with a general contractor up to the stage "interior walls are covered with gypsum." The rest of the interior finishing was either done ourselves or subcontracted without execution planning. The same goes for the garage and the surrounding area.

I had the full range:
- House construction: top site manager, top crew, works without questions due to reasonable execution planning. Still, every morning on the construction site we discussed small details and I answered questions from the crew.
- Craftsmen who, despite corresponding order notes (execution planning during the detailed discussion on site), built things differently than agreed.
- Craftsmen who wanted me on site during execution to discuss questions such as laying patterns directly. Especially the tiler really discussed every little detail and looked for the best, not the easiest solution for difficult situations.
- Craftsmen who just worked without proper coordination and did not do things right even after 5 agreements. I then moved the "support" wall to the neighbor and he had to rebuild it.

From experience, most people (including non-craftsmen) work with the easiest solution for them....

Thank you very much for your answers.

Huh...2 years of house construction...

Yes, but one year of that is planning.

We are not building with a general contractor; we award each trade individually. Therefore, we did not have a "sampling day" and we decide freely on the type/material/quality for each trade, so everything is basically open to us until the trade is implemented (and even partly during implementation if ideas come up), which does not make things easy.

An example: Our heating engineer later cut a passage for the underfloor heating pipes into a wall after the plastering. In doing so, he hit an electrical cable. If he had called briefly and asked, I could have immediately told him where the cables run at that spot, but he just started chiseling. If I had been on site, I would certainly have wondered about it.

I believe the problem I described is due to the fact that the craftsmen are not used to talking to the building owners but rather to the general contractor or the architect. But in our case, we are the contacts.

Or the craftsmen are afraid that we have new ideas :-) No, we are really easy to get along with :)

Thank you very much for your answers.


Yes, but with one year of planning.

We are not building with a general contractor (GC), we award each trade individually.
...
An example: Our heating installer chiseled a passage for the underfloor heating pipes into a wall after the plastering. In doing so, he hit an electrical cable. If he had just called and asked briefly, I could have immediately told him where the cables run at that point, but he just started chiseling. If I had been on site, I certainly would have asked myself.

:)

Who acts as your construction manager? Yourself?
As far as I understand, he is the contact person, even when building with a GC.

Your example, to me, is not really a problem, but simply bad luck and part of "these things happen when several tradesmen pass the baton on site."
As you demand, a tradesman would have to call you at every step (when a tool touches a building element) to ask if there might be anything that could cause surprises there.
But that would not be realistic or feasible at all, rather somewhat naive.
A tradesman does not call, he works!
And according to the execution plan. If anything happens differently than planned, then we are again in improvisation, which a self-employed tradesman usually masters. But that can sometimes confuse the client a little, who is not familiar with the trades. In house building, it's not the path that counts, but the goal.

I cannot see your profession via Tapatalk – I assume your work is limited to making calls and coordinating as a result?!

P.S. I had no idea what to make of your headline in the title... it explains itself in context... see, I saved myself the time-consuming inquiry [emoji6]

P.S. Our subcontractors always called us during the day from time to time. It was actually always about "do you really want it that way according to plan or maybe in the way I/others/currently (better suggestion) would do it?" For technical executions, they decided independently. Without expert knowledge, I can give them no advice.

Well, sometimes the craftsman didn’t understand us. I say hole, he thinks deep

Building with GU. External site management, no. I did it myself. Companies, the GU plus an electrician, a Dani, a plastering crew and screed team, a garden landscaper, Ikea, my brother, my wife, an acquaintance, me. I was on site a lot. Experience, all the craftsmen thought along, made improvement suggestions, only the plumbers were a bit dull and you really had to supervise them. Not always, when the boss himself was on site, it worked better, when they were without him, then it was more like the Werner film, you know, gas, water, swimming pool technology, Rööööhrich at the apparatus. Well, at the end of the day the heating is installed, running, water is also there and the toilets flush. What more do you want! The highlight was the electrician journeyman, he really enjoyed his job and basically planned the wiring and sockets on the job with me. All very practical, only with the telephone cable he missed the mark, FTTH area, he should have taken one more conductor, well, whatever, with the Devolo parts internet now runs over the power and it works too. Everything in life has an alternative, even Merkel learns that. Great also my joiners, Mr. S., here in the plan it should be like this, but I would do it like this, it would be better. The Achmeds, the screed and plastering crew do their stuff and don’t take care of anything else. But they did a pretty good job. So, all in all it went smoothly, no site manager, just the client, who also had to be a sort of client. Karsten

Hello Silent, I could have written that... it was the same with us. We often asked ourselves the same question.. why doesn’t anyone ask us? We had the problem of not being able to be on the construction site regularly, and things were then diligently done (or not done) in our absence, where we would have liked to have been asked or simply informed or present. That’s how we were able to take pictures of the loops of the underfloor heating at the very last moment, because my son-in-law happened to visit the construction site. The next day, the screed was poured. Our luck was that the trades worked well and there was little to complain about. We repeatedly asked for more communication. But that really only happened with big things like "the windows are coming next week, the garage the day after tomorrow, etc.." Interestingly.. when we were on site, we were overwhelmed with questions from the craftsmen.. In the final phase, where it was really about the aesthetic things (façade, walls, tiles, floor..), I was practically on the construction site daily. And that was a good thing.. I dug in the garden all day (you don’t want to “disturb” the craftsmen ;-) and if there was a question, I was within sight and hearing distance. That worked out great. Best regards Steffi.