IKO Contractors Talk: Interview with Dave “Tell It Like It Is” Anderchek, Saskatoon (VIDEO)

For almost 28 years, Dave Anderchek operated as a renovation contractor (JABA Construction since 2000) in Saskatoon. At its peak, JABA had some 25 staff and well over $3-million in revenues. Along the way, Dave Anderchek became well known as one of the most outspoken contractors Canadian Contractor has ever interviewed – which we have done frequently. Dave has no fear about telling uncomfortable truths about “difficult” customers, fly-by-night competitors, and – his favourite – DIYers who create terrible problems for their homes by botching up projects they were grossly unqualified to attempt.

But in this wide-ranging interview with Rob Koci, Dave talks about why he recently decided to downsize his once significant business to two part-time employees and himself in a downtown Saskatoon office. Nowadays, while he still does renovation projects for long-standing clients, he prefers to work as a reno consultant (renoconsultantDA@hotmail.com), problem-solving for contractors and their homeowners customers who have come up across conflicts or technical problems that need an experienced third-party intervention.

Why Dave decided to wind most of JABA’s operations down makes for a great video. Dave is charmingly blunt about…

• Customers who don’t know what their budgets are and have no intention of telling you.
• Customers who simply want you to do the work to price out a job they fully intend to (a) shop to unqualified competitors or (b) do themselves.
• Customers who bring you in to bail them out from jobs they have attempted to do with incompetent competitors, without permits, creating serious structural issues.
• The problems created for legitimate contractors by Saskatchewan’s boom times, which attracted hundreds of “instant contractors” with inadequate training and experience.
• The need for certification of renovation contractors in Saskatchewan – and indeed in every province.
• The almost total ignorance of too many renovation contractors when it comes to how they will have to modify how the building under fast-developing “Net Zero Energy Ready” building code changes that will create extremely tight and energy-efficient structures.
• And many, many more issues which Dave discusses with – as is his trademark – total candour and often startling frankness.

We think it’s a great interview for any working contractor to watch. Enjoy!

This episode of Contractors Talk was brought to you by IKO.