Building Blox: Week 6 – Brickwork sees solid progress / The construction racket

What we did:

  • Bricks delivery
  • Beam and block floor installation
  • Brickwork to ceiling
  • Site management and Community service

Whilst listening to the fantastic weekly property-technology podcast (warning: the theme-tune is weirdly catchy) I was reminded that…

The industry is inefficient

And whilst procuring bricks this week I really saw this.

Normally when procuring items, you would go to multiple suppliers, compare prices and then haggle down to the lowest price. Competition for your order, particularly when the underlying product is the same, should result in a lower price. Not in this case.

The issue here is that once you’ve enquired about a product with building merchant A, they get on to the manufacturer for a quote. This is tagged to your specific project/address and so when building merchant B enquires, the manufacturer knows there is interest, so hikes up the price, at least to merchant B. What’s worse is they will also raise the price for any other product you may be interested in for the project.

"It's a bloody racket"

This was the response from the ‘brick geek’ I met during week 4. I guess this makes sense in the context of the micro-economic theory of firms maximising profits, with the manufacturer knowing they have control of the product supply, so can charge what they want, but let’s remember these are bricks, arguably a textbook commodity product!

So what can we do about it? Unfortunately not a lot if you’re looking for a specific “fancy” brick, as the manufacturer still holds the monopoly power, but finding similar products from others, including from abroad, should help.

Beat them at their own game

Alternatively, you could give alternative or generic details when getting quotes, so the manufacturer doesn’t know this isn’t a repeat enquiry.

With the lack of transparency and fact that in most cases the person procuring materials isn’t the one paying for them, particularly with cost-plus contracts, the end customer overpays. Fixed-price contracts should help you mitigate your risk here, so this issue sits firmly with the contractor, but try telling them that when they suddenly realise they may be paying 20% more than they budgeted for!

On to the actual work.

The beam and block floor was installed. This was arguably during the wrong time as utility pipes/cables hadn’t yet gone in under them, but trying not to micro-manage, this was the contractor’s risk to take.

The bricks and blocks were delivered near the start of the week. The 12k bricks actually had to come in on individual palettes as the truck was too big to get into the site, putting the van under quite a bit of strain!

The boyband returns

The boyband were back for their next performance. Easter in Romania is quite a big deal so wanted to get ahead before having Fri-Tues off. The block and bricks then flew up – sounds great, but I’m sure there’s some saying about haste and speed they didn’t heed, so a few retrofits had to be made, although nothing major.

Planning things on paper years in advance of course is no substitution for seeing things on site, so I had to make sure I was on site and pausing work before clarifying where windows and doors should be positioned. A few tweaks were made, including shifting the rear window up, so you’re not looking at an ugly fence whilst doing the dishes.

Community service

With the large, frequent deliveries and dust from cutting bricks and mixing mortar, I thought it would be nice to send out some Easter cheer with a box of chocolates for all the neighbours and tenants. Thankfully they’ve been patient, which is a testament to the friendly Irish contractors and some strict delivery policies. They also did a bit of community service by washing the tenants’ cars and laying out a smarter parking area for them.

Cleaning plant and tenants’ cars

Next week some emergency gas works threw a spanner at us, but work on brickwork went on smoothly. We even got the first floor started!

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