David Babakaiff, Alair Homes regional partner for British Columbia’s lower mainland was asked to join Jim Caruk of HGTV and others on an expert panel during the Renovator’s Roundtable weekend event held in Vancouver in November. Moderated by Allan Britnell, Managing Editor of Renovation Contractor magazine, the panel fielded questions from the audience of seasoned contractors and provoking questions fro Allan.
Some provoking questions were:
Q- “How do you identify the “problem” client early?”
A- Answers the panel offered up were early signs of potential problem clients include things like the only buying criteria is lowest price. Lowest price in construction eventually finds the substandard supplier and workmanship, who’s only tool to get work is to be the lowest price. Clearly if a general contractor concedes to a client’s demand for lowest price, the job will be stacked with poor quality materials and workmanship, resulting in an unhappy client, delays, and warranty claims. But some clients don’t want to hear that. Another sign of a potentially problem client is one that insists to supply materials, do some work themselves or work by their friend or relative that owes them a favour. These situations rarely turn out well.
Q– How do you charge for your markups?
A– The panel was split on this one, with Jim Curik on the fixed price model side, others on the cost plus side, and Alair with its Client Control ™ model predicated on transparency.
Q– Does the underground economy hurt you’re your business?
Note – the underground economy is renovation work done paid by cash, with no GST reporting or WCB registrations, or no permits issued where they should be. Typically performed by part time contractors or others.
A– It hurts many of the home owners of those deals as well as every tax payer in Canada. The burden of unclaimed income is very large and just means that the rest of us pay more for the services we receive as Canadians. And it does remove some typically smaller renovation jobs from the legitimate renovation contractors.
And of course, if any of you have watched Real Renos on HGTV you know that Jim Caruk is a bit of a straight talking contractor and keeps it lively with antidotes and stories. He shared one story where early in the TV series he was doing a large renovation adding an addition and a rain storm came along. His crew tarped the roof but water got in anyway. He got an emergency call at 6 AM to come to the site and the ceiling of the kitchen had wet drywall falling down and lights flickering. And of course the cameras are in tow, and Jim is thinking to himself “Oh Great, this disaster on national TV – now I probably won’t get another job!”. The owner of the home asked Jim what he is going to do about it, and Jim simply said “ I’ll take care of it” And he did, making it better than new and all was good.