I don't get paid for coordinating with them because I can't do any sort of mark up for the services they offer and I don't know how they work, I don't know if they are efficient or if they actually know what they are doing.
With my own sub contractors, I have worked with almost all of them multiple times and because they have always been relatively efficient, I continue using them, so when I get thrown a random third party sub-contractor that not even my company has vetted through and approved, it is quite worrisome and I always tell my clients that if they want to get a third party sub-contractor in, then they better be ready to deal with the sub-contractors on their own because I want nothing to do with them.
For one of my current project, my client did just that, she decided to engage her own electrician because she found their prices cheaper, as it always is when they decide to liaise with a contractor directly, so I told her right from the start that if she wanted to engage her own sub-contractor, then she has to deal with them herself, and she was totally fine with it, she was sharing with me about how the electrician she has engaged is very friendly and is very familiar with residential projects, that she didn't need to show up to the site to discuss the electrical works with the electrician because the electrician simply knows what to do.
It's all bullshit.
Ever since the renovation started, I have had to get my client to call up the electrician to rectify so many different issues, issues that shouldn't even be happening in the first place for someone who claims they are very experience with residential projects. To make things a little less complicated, I shall call the electrician Eve and her worker Adam.
Eve is the one that talks to the clients and Adam is the one who does the labour, and when the first issue actually came up, my client couldn't understand what exactly had to be rectified because this is her first time doing renovation works and I also don't expect her to know how to tell the electrician what needed to be done, so she requested to start a group chat with me and the electricians and I proceeded to shared with Eve all the problem areas that needed to be rectified, every time I share a problem with her, she would go...
"Noted, Adam please take note of all this changes."
... and that would be it.
But Adam didn't take note of all the changes because every time I go back to the site to inspect, something is always left undone, the wires are not extended, outlet points are not relocated to the requested location and EVERY TIME, when I message my client about it, she will tell me to share the problem in the group chat because she wasn't very sure what I was talking about, so I will just forward the text to the group chat, or sometimes she forwards it herself, but will then ask me to explain in detail to the electrician so they can get a better idea.
This has happened multiple times over the course of the entire renovation and just today, when I went to my site to inspect what the electrician has done, I was bloody shocked.
Just a little background, so on Friday, I decided to drop by the site to take a look at the progress, just for the sake of taking a look at what has happened thus far, I wasn't expecting any contractors to be on site that day because as far as I was aware, Eve had told my client in the group chat the day before that she would only confirm the date for the installation of lights "tomorrow", which is Friday, the day I drop by the site
Confirming the date and actually showing up to install the lights are 2 very different things, Eve didn't confirm the date and Adam was just there on that day I dropped by, it was unexpected but I didn't really care too much because being early is a good thing and I also needed give him some instructions that I felt would be a lot better done if I explained in person.
What I needed for Adam and Eve to do was essentially help me do some screw markings on the wall for a fixture that my client wanted to install, simple as that, and it was honestly quite infuriating whenever Eve reads the text but never acknowledges it, I told her a total of 3 times and all 3 times, she doesn't acknowledges it, my client had to text me personally to confirm if Eve knew about the fixture marking and every time, my reply would be the same...
"I already wrote in the group chat."
... so up till Friday, I never actually knew if Eve and Adam were going to do the marking for me until I actually spoke to the latter.
My instructions to him were simple, mark out where the screws would be but don't install the fixture on the wall, and I reiterated it multiple times that I only needed him to do the marking, he acknowledges my request and I left the site, thinking he was going to do what I had instructed, I mean it was a really simple request....
"Mark out where the screws will be on the wall."
... I didn't think he could mess this up, so I didn't bother to drop by the site on Saturday as I had to be at another site to deal with another problem, which I will probably blog about in another post soon.
Today, I had some free time, so I decided to drop by the place and take a look at the progress, I was quite excited because Adam had assured me that he could complete all the light installation by Thursday and I was just really excited to see how the place would look with all the cove lighting and down lights all fully lit up.
Unfortunately, Adam lied to me because not all the lights were installed when I dropped by just now. The toilets were still not done, the kitchen wasn't done, the service balcony wasn't done, the down-lights in the bedrooms could not be turned on because all the switches were not installed.
I know Adam has to come by a second time to install the fixture, so I wasn't too bothered by it, then I remembered about the fixture request, so I went to take a look, fully expecting the wall to have some sort of pencil markings on where the screws of the fixture will be or at most have the fixture loosely secured on the wall, but there wasn't any because instead of MARKING the wall like I had instructed, Adam went to CUT a fucking hole in the wall the size of the bloody fixture.
I was so fucking blown away.
How the FUCK are you going to secure the fixture on the wall, now that you have removed the portion of the wall that the fixture is suppose to be fixed on, like what the actual fuck? I don't fucking get how he can screw up such a simple request.
I have since sent a message to the group chat and both Adam & Eve have yet to reply, they have read the text and so has my client, but no one is responding yet, I'm not sure how they are going to rectify the issue and at this point, I really don't want to care, this is the problem they created, so they will have to settle it themselves, I will have to ask my client to directly check with them tomorrow if they still choose to remain unresponsive, she was the one who decided to engage them so she will have to deal with the consequences of engaging a random electrician.
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