How to deal with difficult builder?

[Roundtuit]

1 hour ago, Makeitstop said:

Have to admit, I'm with Adsibob and would be mightily pissed at a builder that went ahead with something critical, after being told to wait until something was checked out.

Me too.  If you're 100% confident that he understood your request, then ignored it, then he's a tw@t, regardless of the quality of his work. 

That's not to say you can't continue to work together if the quality and price is right (I had a couple of tw@ts on my build who undoubtedly thought the same about me), but maybe a reminder that you hold the purse strings and that certain criteria need to be met would be helpful.

[ETC]

8 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

News flash...Etc has been appointed to run a major new infastructure project for the Gov. It's not quite finished yet. It's 22 years over the expected timeframe, and we are on the 782nd set of contractors, but it won't be long. Oh, and the budget. Yeah, we won't mention that.

Lol.....good one Big Jimbo....close but no cigar.....

[Gav_P]

We seem to have a bit of discussion about contracts and adhering to the strict instructions, and I agreed in principle... but the reality is, at this level of construction you’re not going to be operation NEC3 or 4 contracts, so the likelihood of either party getting involved with delay claims or any such conflict isn’t high. It will result in a sour relationship. 
 

But it does drive home the point that you as the client need to be on site everyday to make sure someone isn’t doing something stupid / wrong / erroneous/ out of sequence, or exactly to plan that is also any one of the above.

Which is the joy of self building and having high standards, given the time and effort you have put into the design of your home. 

[Adsibob]

53 minutes ago, ETC said:

Not mad.....I think you’ve been very patient.....a builder who did this on my watch would get his arse kicked and them some....I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - works that are not in accordance with the contract(ed) works should be removed at no cost to you. I would always use a contract to protect the client and the contractor in instances like this......do you have a written contract?

We have a very detailed RIBA contract yes. But, and I say this as a professional specialising in contractual disputes, the law is not perfect and even if it was, enforcing the letter of the contract is not always going to help me achieve a practical solution to some problems. E.g. I could have forced him to rectify the mistake, but it was such an expensive mistake to rectify I decided the risk that he would end up skimping elsewhere or rushing the job, in a way that would be harder to police through the contract wasn’t worth it. Rectification would also have been incredibly noisy (lots of concrete to cut out) and would have bothered the neighbours even more than they have already been bothered. 

[Big Jimbo]

26 minutes ago, ETC said:

Let’s face it - there are good builders and not so good builders and there are good architects and not so good architects and it can be pot luck who you get and what level and type of service or build you get. It can be frustrating for all concerned especially a lay client who relies on the advice and guidance from the professionals he/she employs and from the builder who does the work.

 

I have met some very good contractors and I have met some not so good contractors and in most if not all instances differences on site were resolved amicably. It’s always the best way but if this isn’t possible it’s always better to start afresh.

And can we just ask if you consider that this guy has got a good engineer ?  £100 and a mornings work for a trial hole..... Are you really trying to say that you think a good engineer, or even a pretty shit one ain't going to say "Im putting a shite load of extra stresses and load on the existing foundations. I'd better find out what the fudge they are" So according to your expert opinion Adisbob had no way of knowing if his existing footings could take the new loadings, and no way of finding out.  So poor old adisbob, had a fab new extension designed and priced up by a builder. It's £200k, all the money he has got, but it will give him the house he has always wanted. The building work gets underway, the patio is ripped up, the rear roof removed, lots of pockets cut into the existing rear wall to take some fancy new steels etc. The building inspector pops along and sees that there is a lot of load being applied to the existing rear wall, and subsequently say to the builder, " Has the SE calculated the loadings on the existing foundations" Oh shite, everybody says. A short while later.....Shite some underpining needed to take the extra load. Adisbob, says to the builder " How much for my underpining fella" £15 k says the builder. But i aint got £15k !!!!! Well you should have had a £100 trial hole dug. Did the engineer not suggest that..........

[Makeitstop]

You sound like a fair and pragmatic man Adsibob, and you deserve credit for being tolerant in compromising on a solution to the error you mentioned.

 

However, I'd bet that you feel the builder has spent his chances now and that any further significant errors or non compliance with requests will be the end of him.

 

It certainly would with me.

 

Let's all hope it gets resolved and that you can move on to a good result without any major stress.

[ETC]

3 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

We have a very detailed RIBA contract yes. But, and I say this as a professional specialising in contractual disputes, the law is not perfect and even if it was, enforcing the letter of the contract is not always going to help me achieve a practical solution to some problems. E.g. I could have forced him to rectify the mistake, but it was such an expensive mistake to rectify I decided the risk that he would end up skimping elsewhere or rushing the job, in a way that would be harder to police through the contract wasn’t worth it. Rectification would also have been incredibly noisy (lots of concrete to cut out) and would have bothered the neighbours even more than they have already been bothered. 

I agree wholeheartedly. Quoting the contract every time something goes wrong doesn’t necessarily lead to a good working relationship and you are the only one who can weigh up the pros and cons of accepting or not accepting works that you aren’t happy with.

 

Setting aside the bravado about firing the builder you may wish to sit down with him and voice your concerns about his communication with you.

 

I also agree with many sentiments on here in relation to the delay in getting drawings from the engineer to the builder in good time. In my opinion the time scale was too long and although I understand the contractor’s frustration I cannot in all honesty condone him proceeding with the works without your express consent. As I am sure you are fully aware there are contractual avenues open to him in relation to delays and these routes need not necessarily be contentious and can be dealt with quickly and amicably by both parties.

 

In any case good luck with the build.

 

ETC. I’ve been many things but never a PM.

[Big Jimbo]

Adisbob. Only you can decide if you want to keep your existing builder or not. You will, i have no doubt be aware that you may have to delay, will have to pay more (builders hate taking on other peoples unfinished work) It is very busy out there, and you may even stuggle to get a decent builder to quote you. I'm sure you will be aware, that if they can start "in the morning" they will prob be shite. Your call. Your engineer however needs a massive kick in the arse.

[Makeitstop]

I do agree on the architect / SE problem though.

 

Whether the foundations were up to the job prior to work getting underway was surely something they should have addressed.

[Big Jimbo]

1 minute ago, Makeitstop said:

I do agree on the architect / SE problem though.

 

Whether the foundations were up to the job prior to work getting underway was surely something they should have addressed.

EXACTLY.........

[Roundtuit]

5 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

Adisbob, says to the builder " How much for my underpining fella" £15 k says the builder. But i aint got £15k !!!!! Well you should have had a £100 trial hole dug. Did the engineer not suggest that..........

Have I missed something?  I thought this was just about a builder ignoring in clear instruction from a client before progressing a stage of the project?

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, Big Jimbo said:

 the people who i would be super pissed off with is the architect, and the engineer. Jeez, if you are going to do alterations to a building that is going to put more stress on the existing foundations, You check out if the existing foundations will be man enough to take the new stress and loadings. That really is basic stuff i'm afraid. If neither of them flagged that, then i would be putting both of their business cards in the filing cabinet in the "Shite, don't use again"  You should be sending a couple of right arsey emails to those two chancers.

I should clarify a few things for everybody so we can have a more informed discussion:

Many months before the builder was even hired, I took up the floor in the back half of my ground floor to understand how much space was beneath the floorboards to see whether we could actually achieve a condition that had been imposed on us by planning - namely to sink our extension into the ground by about 40cm, without compromising our design objective which was to have most of ground floor all on one level. I provided this info to the structural engineer and he designed a provisional structure that would not have required underpinning.

The very first day the builder was on the job, I gave him a diagram that showed him where the structural engineer had asked for him to dig trial pits to expose the corbels for the engineer to come and inspect them to check they were in accordance with what he had expected and designed for. The builder dug these up and when the engineer inspected we were all surprised by three revelations: lots of water, shallower corbels than expected and a mismatch in corbel heights. We have fixed the water issue (it wasn't actually such a big issue) but I think at the time this distracted me the most and started worrying me (unnecessarily as it turns out) about damp problem. On reflection, it's probably that worry which caused me to overlook the fact that the mismatch in corbel heights, being unusual, implied that the corbels should be exposed everywhere immediately in case there were further surprises. I guess maybe the structural engineer should have realised that as well (I will call this the "Engineer's Minor Oversight"). But nobody did and so the design was quickly altered to allow for these surprises. No underpinning was required as part of those changes - as i explain below the underpinning has nothing to do with the loading of the house as originally conceived in our original plans.

A few weeks later as the builder is progressing the works we notice that the other corbels on parts of the house (not the ones that had been previously exposed) are even shallower. This is really bizarre. It's a 1920s/1930s house, built on a very very slight incline (probably no more than 4 degrees) and yet the corbels have about 4 or 5 different heights and there is little rhyme or reason to it. It was at this point that the architect realised that these higher corbels would make our interior problematic from an aesthetic perspective as the corbels would show when the floor level was reduced and even the ones that wouldn't show would interfere with plans for insulation, underfloor heating etc (although that was a minor consideration). It was also at this stage that the builder had started removing the horrible grey pebbledash we have covering the house and discovered some wall cracking underneath it due to settlement. It is the combination of this aesthetic issue and the settlement that pushed the engineer to recommend some shallow underpinning on two external walls, as this would allow us to remove some of the corbels internally that would otherwise show, and also ensure we'd not have any further issues with settlement. We aren't touching the corbels under the party wall and are instead going to conceal most of them within wooden cabinets/credenzas. So up until this point, whilst I was annoyed the corbels weren't as expected, this was not anybody's fault and so apart form the Engineer's Minor Oversight, I didn't have anybody to blame other than the builder/engineer who built this house in the late 1920s. I guess he/she is dead now. That was about 4 weeks ago and it was then that the engineer should have started on the underpinning design. But we only got it two days ago (I will call this the "Engineer is lazy issue"). Who knows, maybe the engineer has had to be home schooling his kids due to the pandemic.

Edited March 19, 2021 by Adsibob

[Big Jimbo]

adisbob. that took some typing..... so to get the height you wanted, But to stay under your planning restriction height, you are going to sink your new extension down, and perhaps have a step or some steps down from your existing floor level. When done well that can look great. Especially, when they are nice and wide imo. Good luck with the rest of your build......

[ETC]

6 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

adisbob. that took some typing..... so to get the height you wanted, But to stay under your planning restriction height, you are going to sink your new extension down, and perhaps have a step or some steps down from your existing floor level. When done well that can look great. Especially, when they are nice and wide imo. Good luck with the rest of your build......

Can we now take the engineer and the architect off the rack.....??

[Big Jimbo]

You can take what you want off the rack. I will still take you to task for saying that trial holes are never done, and rarer than hens teeth.

3 minutes ago, ETC said:

Can we now take the engineer and the architect off the rack.....??

 

[Gav_P]

Ooo this is a bit of fun Friday night drama ?

[Big Jimbo]

1 minute ago, Gav_P said:

Ooo this is a bit of fun Friday night drama ?

It beats comic relief, although i can't stand her, i did think Divina looks quite hot tonight.

[Adsibob]

2 minutes ago, Gav_P said:

Ooo this is a bit of fun Friday night drama ?

This actually made me smile, which goes to show that getting all of this off my chest has helped me (as has half a bottle of Malbec).

[Gav_P]

4 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

 (as has half a bottle of Malbec).

Trust me when I say... get your self a couple of cases... you’ll need them. ?
 

 

[Big Jimbo]

Fair play Adsibob. There are always worse things going on in the world. I'm glad that between us we managed to get a smile out of you. Now, i'm off to bed. I need to be up in the morning to catch the news, and Etc's appointment by Boris being announced. Try and sit down with your builder. Go for the disarm. tell him that spending all your money is making you worry, and that your sure he will understand. He does this stuff everyday, but you don't , and you just want to try and get it to be as good as possible. Also, be the bigger man and apologise for your engineer taking so bloody long to sort out a simple drawing....... You might just be able to sort it out.   About 25 years ago, i had to blow up at a contractor on site. He tried to throw the race card at me saying i was picking on him because he was Black. I told him that i had no problem or interest in what colour he was, just a problem with his shite work. 25 years later, and i can actually call him one of my pals.

[Big Jimbo]

PS Do you think ETC will ever be my pal ?? Night Night.

[joe90]

Bit late to this debate but interesting reading, the discovery of cracks under the render do shine a different light on the situation, however, I do think “presuming” the corbels are all the same by the SE was “not good practice “ on his part, personally (and I am not an SE) I would have trial dug at multiple locations!!!

[Big Jimbo]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

Bit late to this debate but interesting reading, the discovery of cracks under the render do shine a different light on the situation, however, I do think “presuming” the corbels are all the same by the SE was “not good practice “ on his part, personally (and I am not an SE) I would have trial dug at multiple locations!!!

Yeah, you are bloody late Joe90. Where were you last night when we were having fun. I don't want to put you on the tart list with Pocster...

[joe90]

38 minutes ago, Big Jimbo said:

Yeah, you are bloody late Joe90. Where were you last night when we were having fun. I don't want to put you on the tart list with Pocster...

Sorry Jimbo but I do have a life outside the forum ??? I will try to keep up in future ?

[Adsibob]

2 hours ago, joe90 said:

Bit late to this debate but interesting reading, the discovery of cracks under the render do shine a different light on the situation, however, I do think “presuming” the corbels are all the same by the SE was “not good practice “ on his part, personally (and I am not an SE) I would have trial dug at multiple locations!!!

You are probably right @joe90, although at the time I thought 3 trial holes against 3 different walls was a pretty reasonable exploration. Oh well.