Okay, so I was thinking about my last post when I announced that we would begin working with a GC/construction manager in order to secure our construction financing. I’m sure that this doesn’t fit the purest form of O-B, but in my opinion, it’s probably even a little step up in the genre.
I think to be successful building your own home you have to be realistic about what you don’t know or can’t/don’t want to do and be humble enough (and smart enough) to get help for those things. For me that list is pretty substantial, since my hubby is in a wheelchair and can’t help like he did on our last build. Additionally, you have to have a ton of time and enough expertise to be able to look at someone’s work or consider a specific trade’s work and hand and know what’s good, bad or maybe enough to meet code, but should be beefed up “because”… I’m not working, so I definitely have the time and I’d like to think I’m 100% capable, but realistically, I’m not an expert, so I’m never going to hit that percentage.
If you hire a GC to run a job and he presents you with a price for the build and you accept it and have nothing more to say about who gets used, what gets used and when the bills get paid, then you’re no longer an O-B. But if you hire a GC to partner with you as a consultant/construction manager, whose job it is to get you the best quality at the best price in the most timely fashion, and the entire process is made transparent for you — I think that’s a highly workable O-B hybrid. If the only additional expense to us over the bids we’d gotten is this construction manager’s fee, then isn’t it a win-win? If he can shave thousands off the bids we were perfectly accepting of before he came into the picture, isn’t that all good for us? Seems like he’s covering some, if not most, of his fee… He’s getting paid a reasonable amount to run the job as we envisioned it and any lack of experience on our part isn’t going to delay our getting into our new home. He’s saving money over what we thought was the best we could do after months of research, bid requests and proposal reviews. He took a single look at our plans, looked at my husband in his wheelchair and realized that the floor joists hadn’t been spec’d properly to accommodate a lowered floor in the showers so that we would end up with the flat access we need – now there’s some money we won’t have to come up with after the fact! He has a relationship with the building department that we could never have, so we’ll probably stay on schedule from that aspect as well. And I have 30 years of experience on call to answer every dorky question I can come up with so that I can understand exactly what’s going on.
I still get to project-manage the job, but now I have a “partner in crime” who, like me, is excited to see how little we can spend to get the house we need, but to do so in a quality way that isn’t going to cost us in the end. A penny saved isn’t always a penny earned and I suspect that, with O-B, the errors could be amplified in ways that could quickly deplete a budget or cause schedule overruns of the highest order. At this point, if I could find a bank willing to lend us funds without a GC involved, on the face, I would save about $45K but I would have to be absolutely perfect in order not to eat up the savings with any errors I might make myself. I’m thoughtful, logical, a pretty good judge of people, a savvy shopper and a stickler for detail, BUT absolutely perfect? Not so much!
This construction manager being involved has lifted a layer of anxiety off my shoulders that I didn’t even realize I had. I think it’s because, unlike many O-B’s who do their projects over much longer periods of time, we really need to start and get done without delay. The hubby’s health is a big concern for me and the longer we live in this shoebox and he doesn’t have access to his therapy equipment the more likely deterioration is. So I welcome this Wayne’s involvement as a construction manager — I’m happy to add a member to the team. And if it has a price tag attached that I can live with and the result is a home with my hand in it/my personal stamp on it, so much the better.
Maybe what happened with the original builder’s package price was fate… if it hadn’t been so ridiculously high, I wouldn’t have been so dogged in getting up to five bids per trade and I wouldn’t have known just how much their initial involvement was going to cost us — and we still would have been working without a net on everything after the house was dried in. If I hadn’t had the banker we do, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Wayne’s referral and I would still be a hamster on a wheel trying to negotiate with the original builder and likely getting nowhere fast. Instead, I’m feeling peaceful and hopeful — the polar opposite of what was building up previously. So much to think about, collect details about and organize. So many relationships to build after figuring out who you want to work with on all the trades. I love the O-B model, but I really like that I can have some flexibility and still realize the quality and the savings with my new hybrid!
Living a Rewarding Life in the Great NW 