Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Stream
Home Construction Podcast,
where we take your project fromconception to completion.
Hosted by Licensed GeneralContractor Alex Kozley, we cover
everything from accessorydwelling units to commercial
construction in the greaterColorado Springs area.
Whether you're dreaming of anew ADU, planning an office
upgrade or tackling a majorrenovation project, we've got
(00:26):
the expertise to guide youthrough it.
Let's get building.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Alex Cozley shares
how enthusiastic clients can
unintentionally disrupt a buildand how smart communication
keeps everyone on the same page.
Welcome back everyone.
Skip Monty here, co-host slashproducer, back in the studio
with licensed general contractorAlex Coastley.
Alex, how's it going?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Skip, I'm doing great
.
How are you doing yourselftoday?
Speaker 2 (00:59):
I'm doing just fine,
doing just fine.
It's just Tuesday, but that'sall right.
I'm a fan of Tuesday, so tacoTuesday.
So big question on my mind,alex, is you know, my wife tends
to get involved in contractorsaround the house doing building
the deck, working inside thehouse, doing whatever, and gets
under their feet.
And so always I wanted to askyou, you know, do you ever have
(01:20):
clients who you think they'retoo involved in the process?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, oh yeah, the
daily hard hat client yes, we've
had a few and, I'll be honest,they've taught us a lot.
Most importantly, just becauseyou can show up to the job site
every day doesn't mean that youshould.
Now don't get me wrong.
We do love involved clients.
In fact, our entire process isdesigned around thoughtful
client engagement.
(01:46):
But there's a huge differencebetween strategic involvement
and micromanaging your generalcontractor.
The reality is, when clientsare overly present, such as
showing up unannounced, askingsubs for changes, directly
trying to quote unquote managethings on site, it doesn't help.
It actually hurts.
In fact, projects almost alwaysrun better when clients give
(02:07):
the team space to do their job.
It might feel counterintuitive,but it is true.
Our most efficient, stress-free,on-time builds have come from
clients who trusted the processand didn't try to fly the plane
from the aisle seat, becausethat's what it's like.
Imagine you're on a commercialflight and decide to pop into
the cockpit to give the pilot afew tips.
You wouldn't do that right.
You'd sit back, maybe order adrink and let the professionals
(02:30):
fly the plane.
Construction's no different.
When everyone stays in theirlane, the result is smooth, safe
and on time.
We work with clients who are onsite almost every day of their
build.
Let's just say we're creatingnew policies to make sure that
doesn't happen again.
When it happens, it's commonfor clients to start giving
instructions to oursubcontractors directly.
(02:50):
It's one thing that we seewithout bringing us in the loop.
Suddenly we have changes beingmade that haven't been approved,
weren't aligned with the plans,and create extra work.
This has often led to delays inthe timeline and confusion
among the team, kind of likehiring a chef and jumping behind
the stove to season the soupfor yourself.
If you're going to do that, whyhire a chef in the first place?
(03:12):
True, but to be clear, you knowwe do want our clients to be
involved, but on purpose and bydesign, and you know we've
structured our process toinclude milestone job walks
where clients get to see keyphases of projects as they
unfold.
One most important is a boxwalk where clients physically
walk through the space and seeevery switch, outlet and fixture
location in 3D, Because it'snot always easy to see, even on
(03:36):
3D rendering, you know, orespecially on a 2D plan, Most
people's brains don't convertthat into physical reality,
especially on a 2D plan.
Most people's brains don'tconvert that into physical
reality.
So, being able to walk throughthe job site and see that and
have that.
Active involvement is veryimportant part of our process
and it's incredibly helpful andit's how we help our clients'
visions really come to life.
But we also need input fromclients on things like material
(03:56):
selections and finishes.
Those are decisions that willshape the final product.
Again, we want the engagementto be intentional, though, and
not reactive.
Something many clients don'trealize is that construction
involves constant problemsolving.
Behind the scenes.
There's always little issues orsite-specific quirks and
real-time decisions being made,most of which never reach our
(04:16):
clients' attention, and that'son purpose.
You know our job as the generalcontractors is to shield our
clients from that chaos.
We are hired to manage movingparts so our clients don't have
to.
If clients see every hiccup,it's easy to start feeling
anxious or overwhelmed, whichcan lead to unnecessary changes,
which can cause delays and morecosts.
So again, best tip trust theprocess.
(04:37):
That's what you're paying usfor.
To make clients feel connectedwithout being on site, we have
some other ways to communicateand keep clients plugged in, one
of which is using aBuilderTrend software.
Our superintendents on sitecreate daily logs for every
person that was on the site,stating what was done.
We provide plenty of photos.
It's basically like a personalproject dashboard for the client
(05:00):
.
They can go and see theschedule, daily logs, photos,
updates.
In addition to that, we hostbiweekly video conference or
in-person owner-contractormeetings where we walk through
the last two weeks of progressand then plan for the next two
weeks.
So we give our clients plentyof time and space to ask
questions and get answers andstay plugged in with what the
(05:20):
plan is without having to put ontheir hard hat.
Let's say, Using this systemwith BuilderTrend and updates
online that clients can access.
We've completed multipleprojects for out-of-state
clients with these systems.
It works beautifully.
The projects move faster andsmoother when there's mutual
trust.
So, after working with clientswho have been overly involved
(05:41):
and seeing the unintendedconsequences of that, we've now
started developing clearpolicies around job site access
and communication.
The intent is not to be rigidor exclusive, but to protect the
integrity of your project.
Boundaries make the processbetter for everyone, including
our client ourselves and all ofour subcontractors as well.
So if you're a future client,you're listening, wondering how
(06:03):
involved you should be.
The answer is absolutely.
You should be involved, butwithin a plan.
So bring your ideas be part ofthe vision.
Show up for key walkthroughsand big decision.
But once you set the course,trust the pilot and let us fly
the plane.
Your project's gonna turn outbetter, faster and do fewer
bumps along the way.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Very cool.
Turn out better, faster, fewerbumps along the way very cool.
Now I'm impressed with the, theproject dashboard.
What did you call that?
A client portal?
Speaker 3 (06:29):
yeah, client
dashboard, yeah, personal
project dashboard yep, we've got, yeah, photos from the job site
from that day, from pretty muchevery trade.
We see photos of electrical, ifthe electrician was there.
We'll see plumbing photos, theplumbers there.
Anything our superintendent orour team has performed We'll
have photos and documentation of.
They can access the schedule,they can really see the whole
(06:49):
kind of project plan unfoldingfrom this portal.
It's a great way for them to,you know, be involved and see
what's going on without havingto, you know, make a phone call
to interrupt kind of theworkflow and that kind of thing.
Of course we're always happy totake phone calls but you know,
we create these systems to tryto streamline the process so,
you know things can run assmoothly without, you know,
deviations and interruptions.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Wow, that's pretty
unique.
Actually, I just had a neighborbuild a house recently and they
definitely did not have that.
I can see where that could comein handy.
Also wanted to ask you know,talking about having control
freaks, you know, on site, Icould imagine that causes some
liability safety issues,wouldn't it?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, it sure can,
and that's part of the
discussion internally that we'rehaving is you know we
definitely want to.
You know we want everyone to besafe.
It's definitely a top priorityfor our company, our clients as
well, and you know it's it's.
There's definitely some hazardsand some risks that you take
when you step onto a job site.
So that's part of thediscussion is, you know how do
we control that?
Because if, if there's unsafeconditions at any time and our
(07:53):
clients feel they can just kindof come and go freely, it does
create some risk and that's partof why we want to set up some
boundaries and likely have aclient would ideally be escorted
onto the site by one of ourstaff members.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Gotcha and I know
there's probably a lot of
different ways that clients canget in the way, but are there
some common disruptions that arelike happen all the time?
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I think it's just
jumping in when something's in
in progress, not yet completed,and thinking, oh, that doesn't
look right, well, that's becauseit's not finished yet, and then
trying to point out things andit's oftentimes it's just like
it's frustrating thesubcontractor, is frustrating
our team, where we just we knowwhat we need to do.
We don't need help from someonewho doesn't really know what,
(08:38):
what to do.
And so, yeah, a lot of timesit's just seeing things that
aren't complete and beingconcerned and trying to push it
forward, when you know we dohave a plan and we know that
it's incomplete.
You know, a lot of times we,you know, we, we, we want to be
transparent with our clientsabout the issues on the job site
.
We want to be transparent withour clients about the issues on
(09:00):
the job site, but a lot of timesthey're solved before we even
need to bring them to theirattention.
And you know, to us, if we doneed to bring an issue to a
client's attention for adecision or something like that,
we want to have solutions inplace.
We want to have thought throughit internally and not just show
up and say here's a problemfrom that regard.
Show up and say here's aproblem from that regard.
So you know, again, giving somedistance, keeping some distance
(09:22):
there, allows us to, you know,bring bring issues when they
arise to a client, without itbeing a surprise and seeming
like we are not prepared for thesituation.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Now I'm sure I know
the answer to this question, but
do you ever have clients who,whatever piece of the project
you're you're focusing on at themoment, is done exactly to the
specifications that was agreedupon, and they say, nah, I don't
think I like that yeah wedefinitely have that and we're
working as a company to more andmore better communicate and
(09:49):
call it the space shuttlephilosophy that we.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
So I heard this on a
podcast with a general
contractor who was talking to awoman at a bar and hotel who
worked for NASA or was a privatecontractor related to NASA and
she'd been working on a spaceshuttle project for 10 years.
The same project and you knowit kind of came out of the
conversation with this generalcontractor gleaned from it was
(10:14):
you know, construction companiesshould run more like space
shuttle companies.
You know they're not thinking,oh, we'll figure some of this
out when we get up there anddecide what we want.
It's like the whole plan needsto be done before you launch a
spaceship or people will die.
You can't change programmingmid-flight and decide what
supplies you want.
So you know we're really tryingto move to that and really
communicate that to the clients.
(10:35):
Like there's risk, you know, andyeah, people probably aren't
going to die, you know, if wedon't decide what kind of
countertops or all the decisionsaren't made ahead of time.
But the same theory holds true,like we want to know exactly
what's going to be done as soon,as far in advance as possible
so that we can have a reallysolid plan in place and then
react as those things.
You know, any changes ordeviations come along.
(10:57):
But if we don't know the plan,we don't, we can't.
You know, we don't know whathappens here, we can't plan out
the rest of it from here.
So you know, really just havinga clear plan in place from the
beginning and not deviating fromit is essential and we're doing
everything we can tocommunicate to clients better up
front what the implications are, because it almost always you
know a change made mid projectsgoing to cost money and cost
(11:19):
time inevitably absolutely,absolutely well, alex love it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Um, that was some
very helpful information,
especially for us control freaksout here who feel like we have
to control everything.
I think you know the end resultis a is a better built, quality
built house with less stress.
So appreciate that that's right, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Yeah, sometimes I
have to tell the clients look at
these pictures, not this wall,but look at the pictures of
these projects on the wall.
They're beautiful, they're done.
Yours is going to look likethat by the time we're done here
.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Don't, don't worry
there you, there you go, there
you go.
End results, what matters.
Well, alex, thanks again andwe'll catch you in the next
episode.
Hope you have a great rest ofthe week.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Hey, you too.
Thanks a lot, skip.
See you later.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
All right, man, we'll
see you.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
That's a wrap for
this episode of the stream home
construction podcast.
Ready to bring your vision tolife?
Snag a free on-siteconsultation by visiting our
website at wwwyourstreamhomecom,or call or text us at
719-644-6777.
(12:32):
Until next time, let's keepbuilding your residential and
commercial dream in the greaterColorado Springs area.