Please communicate!
| May 2010My shirt had long been discarded and my pants looked like I had had a childhood accident. My apprentice wasn't fairing much better. He had taken to laying down in the gravel where it was a bit shaded. "Holy Crap, it's hot", he complained, "why don't we come back and finish this digging tonight?"
"We can't," I said. “Inspection is booked for three and the boys are going to pour tomorrow morning."
The job completed, we crawled up the ladder and pulled ourselves over the top of the foundation. Our picks and shovels landed in the back of the truck with the sweet sound of accomplishment.
"Let's get to Dairy Queen. My treat,” I said. Just then Big Dan pulled up. I've always enjoyed working for Dan. If he were any more laid back he'd be asleep.
"How'd you make out?" he asked. I told him we were done. “Good man,” he said.
“Here,” I said, “I'll give you back the plan, I don't need it now.”
“You didn't have any problem with the flip, did you?"
"Flip?" I said…
According to Wikipedia, "communication" is a process of “transferring information from one entity to another.” That’s fine as long as there are two “entities” but there have been countless times in the past as a sub-contractor that I've been the “third entity” in bad communication between the client and the contractor.
The classic is when I have had the situation arise where I billed a contractor an extra and he refused to pay because it wasn't in our scope of work. So I went back to the homeowner to collect and they refused to pay because they said it should have been included in the price.
Most people don't realize how hard contracting can be. It's not just the codes rules and by-laws, but the decisions and the personalities, the back-orders, the weather, the trucks that won't start, getting the kids to hockey, and that "God Damn Phone!!" And all of these tasks need excellent communication among those involved to ensure everything happens on time, on budget and to the level of quality the customer expects.
My key tool for communication management is the notebook I always keep in my back pocket and the day-timer in my truck. The notebook allows me to take notes and phone numbers or document any changes that I might be informed about. I also have a Work In Progress (WIP) folder in my office. All my bigger jobs are tagged with things that I'll need when I get back to finish. I’ll write, “Five-foot tub is now a four foot shower,” for example. Documenting this kind of thing has won a lot of arguments. "No” I say, “you called me on June 5th and I told you it would be an extra $500 because I have it written right here." Always, I try to do my best to make sure that I understand exactly what the client or contractor wants.
Another tool is my humour. Teasing the poor contractor when they don’t listen has become one of my favourite past-times. "My Mind Reader 3000 is in the shop, you're going to have to tell me what you want." “Does it say Houdini Electric on my truck?" Maybe that’s not fair, but it can be very frustrating to show up to do a job and no-one knows exactly what’s going on. I've seen guys using those little hand held tape-recorders, which are great. Or husband-and-wife teams where one does all the talking and the other takes notes.
The contractor is the middle-man between me and the client, so the better job he can do relaying expectations and needs to me, the better our end result will be. And the happier the client will be.
A week after my “big dig,” I had to go back and re-dig, but this time we did it at night. Dan refused to pay me for my extra time because he swears he told me that the plan was flipped. Eating that kind of loss is tough, but I have to do it sometimes. It would be so much easier if we could communicate.