This practice isn’t without risk. It puts the entire burden of accurate estimating on the remodeler. “If we miss something, we’ll eat it,” Horen says, noting that he doesn’t try to pass such costs on to clients or trades. “We don’t make our problems their problems.”
On the positive side, it saves Horen the trouble and time of having to arrange for the trades to walk through the project. The Lifestyle Group’s relationship with its trades is also good enough that if a hidden or unforeseen condition does arise, Horen will know before he gets the bill — in time for him to negotiate any change orders allowed by his agreement with the homeowners.
CHART A COURSE Getting trades’ input on the job falls under “communication” and “preparation,” and there’s a lot more to both as they apply to the remodeler-trade contractor relationship. Once you have the contract and have chosen the trades, you need to be in regular touch with them regarding the schedule.
“The more notice, the better,” says Wes Carver, president of Wes Carver Electrical Contracting, in Telford, Pa. “A job I heard about a month ago gets priority over one I heard about three days ago,” he adds.
Setting the schedule as soon as possible, then, becomes important. Fannin says that as soon as a client signs a contract, the company alerts the trades to the tentative timeline for the project. That early notification not only gets Post & Beam Design Build on the trades’ schedules, but “gives [trades] the opportunity to be efficient,” Fannin says, by, for example, applying for several permits at once rather than making multiple trips. Moffitt calls to remind trades two weeks before they are scheduled to be on a job. He follows up with a call the next week, and places a third call the day before.
Greg Henry, owner of Stephen Davis Construction, a framing contractor in Falls Church, Va., says that one thing remodelers could do better is have all materials ready for him. “They are used to their people working at a certain pace,” he says, so they think they understand the pace of the job. But Henry and his crews can work faster, since it’s their specialty. “My end of the job is all labor,” he says. “If I have guys standing around [waiting for materials], it’s very costly.” Scheduling the trade in phases — so that they have to be on site multiple times — is similarly bothersome.
DO THE BEST YOU CAN Of course, every remodeler knows that an unchanging schedule is a fantasy. And for the most part, trades do, too, and respect the need for flexibility when working on a remodeling project. “We understand that certain things are beyond even the best remodeler’s ability to control,” says Nigel Costolloe, president of Brookline, Mass., painting contractor Catchlight. Carver says his company writes its two-week schedule on a whiteboard, because “we’re always erasing it.”
However, the more notice you give, the less likely it is that the trades will stand you up — a constant source of grumbling for remodelers. “When we find out about stuff at the last minute, that throws me into a tailspin for that day,” Carver says.
Once on the job, trades would much rather talk to someone familiar with the site, rather than the company owner. “It’s important that a quality supervisor is there to help work through problems,” Henry says.
Carver also says he’d rather be in communication with a lead carpenter. “He’s more realistic, having been out on the job every day,” Carver says. “A company owner is more likely to have us in there on top of people,” pushing to get the job done on schedule.