When you order a pizza you have a pretty good idea of how it’s made...Do you know what's on your home?
The title of this blog might seem like an odd question. But surprisingly we are asked it quite often. You’ve driven by hundreds of job sites without any extra thought, but now you are building a house…….. and you notice every home being built!
When you order a pizza you have a pretty good idea of how it’s made. With a house it seems pretty simple too, get some wood, make a wall, get some bricks, make a wall. But your house isn’t just a couple of walls, it’s your home. Your cabinets are two colours, you have a projector in your master bedroom and heated floors in your entrance. What if the builder forgets something, how can they possibly remember it all?
The key is planning. I know, I know, pretty obvious. When we have a new job start, we make something that we call a “Job Package”. There are a few different stages to the job package, with key starting points. The first part is all options and plan modifications. You know how you wanted to move the master bedroom wall a foot over, for more space for your shoes in the walk-in closet? Well that’s one of the things that will be sent out to the architect for plan modification. So now when we start construction, we don’t have a model plan, we have YOUR plan.
Any options that you select are all added to the project on the day the project is created, so all purchase orders with YOUR plan are made and sent out to our suppliers. At the same time, they will receive the schedule. So months in advance, the painters will know when they need to put that last fresh coat of paint in your living room. But we had a few really rainy days during framing and got a little bit behind schedule, so how is the painter going to know? Well…….. they can see the whole job schedule themselves! We are always using the newest technology, and one of those happens to be automatic scheduling updates. “But wait, you said that we were behind schedule because of rain? Will my house be delivered on time?” We already foresee delay days and have it set-up in the schedule, so no worries.
What if something is changed during construction? What if you want a wall moved, or you decide you would like to have granite countertops? That’s where change orders come in. We take whatever change is made and document it and put it in the project in our system and “Job Package”. If a change needs to be made on the plan, it is redrawn and sent to all of our sub-trades. New purchase orders are made to reflect the changes.
Keep in mind this is a (very) general overview of some of the process that goes into building your home, but we hope it has helped you understand it a bit better. Let us know what else you would like to learn about the home building process!.