Friday, September 9, 2011

Sloooooooow progress; its better than no progress!


We are still in pre-construction and it is taking its sweet time to get everything signed off. We have had another 3 versions of the ‘final plans’ and ‘final contract variation’ and if there is one piece of advice I can give to those of you building and at this stage is that you need to check, double check and then check again. We have picked up a myriad of mistakes and changes this week and they have not always been logical, nor highlighted to us by the builder.

The biggest error was the removal of the provisions for future evaporative cooling (a powerpoint, capped cold water point and upgraded roof trusses). This for some reason was on the electrical variations and the plans but didn’t end up in the final contract, in fact in the last version of the plans ‘QA’ had it removed altogether from everything without informing us. Lucky we went over everything with a fine tooth comb!

The other issue that we have been dealing with this week was post-demolition asbestos residue. All homes built about the time our original old house was, have asbestos in one form or another. We had asbestos removal done prior to demolition but some more residue was spotted along the fence boundaries by out site supervisor last week and we needed that cleaned up before Metricon will send anyone to site start, and that’s fair enough. Jim the demolisher was onto it quickly and to cut a long story short, we have had another site clean and Metricon is now in possession of another independent asbestos clearance certificate.

The good news in all of this is that by Monday once the office receives our signed final plans (they are about 99% correct with only 1 small correction remaining, which doesn’t require a plan redraw), the ordering will commence. Once the ordering has finished (by the end of next week at the latest), we will be at site start… FINALLY!!!!

As I said above, slow progress is better than no progress. We are happy to take the time to get things done right. You can never look through your contracts enough and our toing and froing has all been by email which has put everything in writing (a great tip!). I have no doubt our pedantic behaviour will be worth it all in the end!

Hope that the next post will be more exciting!
Kirsten

6 comments:

  1. Glad you picked up on the mistakes, it's so frustrating that even things correct in previous versions go missing - we've had similar experiences. We are waiting on the results of the second soil test which should arrive early next week then hopefully get our final plans to check over. I hope they dont screw up our hydronic heating variation - a couple of power points and TV point need moving as a result. I specified new locations but I'm sure they'll be overlooked. Did they lock in your site and slab costs without any change? I'm expecting another $1k or so like you got for sewer depth but I'm really hoping the other costs stay the same!

    Good luck with getting your start date!

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  2. Hi Nat, I hope they don't stuff up too much. Our site scrape which was a provisional amount came in over $2.5k more than the original and the slab cost was about $500 less. The only outstanding cost is an allowance for rock, so we desperately hope they don't find too much of that!!!

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  3. Hi Cam & Kirsten,

    Can you provide details of who you used to do the asbestos residual cleanup (post-demolition) and provide the asbestos clearance certificate?

    As you can see from our blog
    http://ournolan.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/an-unwanted-setback-today
    we have the same issue and will need to get someone in to cleanup the mess.

    Thanks

    Chris & Kristen

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  4. Hi cam and kristen,

    Did you have to sign the contract on the day you had the appointment with M or can you take it home.to study them?

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  5. Hi cam and kristen,

    Did you have to sign the contract on the day you had the appointment with M or can you take it home.to study them?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Hemmy,

      We had the preliminary contract and variation statements to look over and didnt sign on the day. They may try to pressure you to sign straight away but if you are not comfortable with something then take the info home and make another appointment.

      From memory, the final contract however you cannot take home. It is just a combination of the prelim contract and all your variations anyway.

      Hope this helps
      Kirsten

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