Pie in the Sky (the search for homeowner – builder nirvana)

We’re no saints!
What, for the average builder, constitutes the ideal homeowner?

One who lives somewhere else, who’s garden is already a tip, who never comes near the job and who pays up on time. That would be as good as it gets as far as most blokes are concerned.

Failing that, people who know what they want, don’t change their minds every day and realise that building’s a dirty job and that mess is an inevitable part of the process. That would do.

What makes the perfect builder then?

One who turns up on time, every day until the jobs done perfectly, considerately and on budget…… That should just about cover it.

There shouldn’t really be a next line here of course but failing the above, one who keeps householders informed, would be much appreciated. (If you have to ask “Informed about what”? You’ve never had builders in, have you)!

There’s one thing to remember……

Builders do it every day of their lives, we should all be experts at cooperating with householders. Householders only enter into the process once in a blue moon, they are effectively, rank amateurs in a process they very often know absolutely nothing about, who are suddenly subjected to a house full of great hulking blokes they don’t know and in some cases are rather glad they don’t know. We as builders should expect them to be just a trifle on edge, possibly!

So that’s it, it’s always the builder’s fault, the customers always right, our three years at business college should really have drummed this into us a wee bit more.

And there of course is the source of the problem……….no training! Until a lot more builders learn to employ a few more simple basic principles, the title of this article is always going to be nothing more than a fantasy.

Or to put it in the vocabulary of a chap I used to work with “It aint gunnerappen.”