Construction for dummies in Russia: save money and mind - страница 6

2. Be sure to correspond and notify the customer in writing about the identified errors and inconsistencies in the design and estimate documentation, draw up acts for all, including commission inspection acts. In the future, this can help not only to make changes to the project documentation correctly, but also to justify the change in the cost of work.

3. Carefully read the contract, sometimes it provides for the possibility of an increase in the cost of work or materials upon bilateral agreement with the customer, but as a rule, such an increase is limited to an amount up to 10 or 15 % of the total contract value.

Profit can be lost even where you do not expect it at all.

Example:

We had one object where, among other things, we had to make porches or canopies over the entrances to the building. We had an estimate, which included the amount of metal needed for the installation of the porches in tons, and the project did not contain a word about how these porches should look, no diagrams or sketches. If I'm not mistaken, the estimate was about 300 kg. metal without specifying its type, dimensions, profile and thickness. In the estimate, this metal was listed as processed metal, that is, as finished metal products, which immediately increases their cost, probably twice as much as the cost of pure metal. Complete lack of clarity on how to do the job…

The technical supervision explained how to be something like this: “Do it normally, so that it is reliable and beautiful enough, but without frills …”

We looked at how this is usually done at other objects, figured out what metal would be needed, its thickness, sketched out how it would all look like, figured out that snow could fall on the visors from the roof … It seems everything turned out fine on paper. We bought metal, welded spatial frames, racks, assembled everything, painted it. We are waiting for acceptance by the construction supervisor .

A representative of technical supervision came, measured each element of our porches, measured the thickness of each of their elements. In general, I calculated the real weight of the metal that we spent on the whole thing. In fact, it turned out to be 40 percent less … Accordingly, she said that since there is less metal, there will also be less money, and these 40% were cut out of the cost of work.

We went nuts from such a “flagrant injustice”, because the porches looked quite presentable, reliable. We did not expect this at all – we simply did not think that someone could have such an approach to the formation of technical specifications and to the acceptance of work. They conveyed their claims to the customer, explained that there was nowhere to sculpt excess metal, insisted on accepting 100% of the work … To which an absolutely logical answer followed, that we mounted exactly as much metal as we were paid for, and no matter what salary we paid workers for this work.

As a result, this money was withdrawn from us and it was useless to prove something, except that it was possible to weld this missing metal somewhere else, but it was just stupid, because. the structures were already absolutely finished, it was already unprofitable to pay for these works anew and spend time on this.

Recommendations:

If you are dealing with weight volumes and do not have a project for the execution of work, check everything in advance using a metal weight calculator or metal weight tables.