The weather was really cold this week but the guys cracked on and removed the shuttering from the first pour of the walls and moved it ready for the second pour. Luckily the weather warmed up and they were able to pour the final structural walls on Friday so this should be the last of the  waterproof concrete. As you can see where the shuttering has come off we are left with really neat concrete with just the shutter panel marks. The waterproofing guy inspected these and was really happy: in his words 'near perfect'! He will do a detailed inspection when all the shuttering is off and if there are any cracks (and he couldn't see any so far) they will get filled and sealed with some sort of waterproof compound. The next step will be to remove all the shuttering and then we will see the real space for the basement and houses . Its odd how sometimes the space seems huge and at other times it gets much smaller. Following the clean-up its external tanking/waterproofing and backfill and internal masonry walls. Also you can see the opening for the garage window which has been pre-cast, its the only opening we can actually measure before we order the windows which is a scary thought!

Sadly the temperature really went down with one of our main suppliers this week. Firstly they missed some details in their quote and the (agreed price) contract,and came back with an extra price to fix this. This is really annoying since we pointed out several time at the quote stage that there was a really odd detail in the Architects plans and were they OK with it; we were assured that this was OK so we went forward on that basis, only now do we find that they missed the complexity and extra work it will take. They have had the drawings for this detail, which has never changed, for at least 6 months and we released final Architects drawing to them about 3 months ago - so its taken them a very long time to figure this out, though they do apologise and acknowledge its their cock up. From our point of view, and we are confident from a contractual standpoint, we are in the right and its their cost, obviously they have their view on it which is somewhat different. Eventually they did come down  30% but they refused to meet us half way. So what do you do at this point? They are adamant that without the extra payment they are not prepared to do the work. We could take it to arbitration and we are reasonably confident we would win, or at least end up at the 50/50 point we were reluctantly prepared to go to. However if were to go down that route then its pretty certain they would stop work and we would be facing a huge delay, and certainly it would be very difficult to work with them going forward. To some extent we can see their point of view - its extra work and materials they hadn't costed and it does need to be done. Annoyingly though, if we had know about this when we were negotiating  Non Material Amendments with Planning we might have been able to design it out and go to their zero cost standard detail - but going back to Planning at this stage is not really an option (or one fraught with risk and delay, and a huge history!).

We had not quite decided what to do, but seemed to be between a rock and a hard place when they came back with some more elements they had missed and wanted to reduce window sizes, add more steel, take out the Pocket Doors  and charge us more money.  At this point I have to say I lost it a bit and voiced my dissatisfaction! Things have improved a bit and they looked at the design with some more care and it seems they can solve most of the problems and all we need to do is compromise some room sizes to accommodate them. If this had happened when they first got the drawings, or when we gave them 'final' Architect drawings we would have been much happier, but really this is very late in the day to uncover issues like this. The really worrying bit is what else is there that they have not found yet!

So with the relationship temperature still below freezing  we seem to have little choice but to carry on - but we are still really unhappy and as its a major reputable supplier it make our position really difficult.  Perhaps we are being unreasonable, or naive, in our expectations, but its probably a lesson learnt - regardless of the contract when you reach a certain point going back becomes an almost impossible option and your supplier has you in a corner (to put it politely!).

See https://www.dropbox.com/sh/th9f6e3cel5dm1q/AAAfsWdAH184J75bCNUUtzVra?dl=0  for the weekly videos.