And when the music stops..

It seems to be Ventura’s policy to change supervisors at a whim, we have just been informed of the fact that our supervisor that has looked after (I use the term loosely here) the construction has been moved into a different department and we now have a new supervisor I have never met. Oh, and I use the term ‘informed’ in its most generous sense, where we actually only ‘informed’ when I asked for some information from the supervisor.

Same thing happened when my Client Liaison Officer went on four weeks holidays, I rang up and was asked to put me through to her and the front desk (without telling me) put me through to somebody else. It was only then after thinking I had the wrong person that she told me my CLO is on holiday and she was looking after my file. I know things are a little hectic in the building industry at the moment but just how hard is it for a CLO to send a group email to all of the clients he/she is looking after informing them they will be away and to talk to so and so if you have any queries? Seriously how hard is that? Or a quick email telling me that my supervisor has changed, instead of not bothering to tell me and letting me know only when you can no longer get away with NOT telling me, how damn hard is that! (in fact I timed myself doing just that, writing and email and sending it and it took me all of 30 secs – including the time for outlook to open – they are not THAT busy).

But this I fear seems to be currently typical with my builder Ventura Homes. The policy (as it appears to an outsider like myself) is something along the line of “Talk to the client before they sign the contract (to get them to sign), once signed build their house with as little interaction as possible, here by saving time and money by not having to fix things that we muck up”… or perhaps they are just anti-social people with anthropophobia?

Now, onto the house. Remember that dishwasher issue that I mentioned last time (power and mains plumbing supplied to dishwasher cavity but no waste water drain!), well it still has not been fixed and no solution proposed either (in fact it was about this that I wanted to talk to my supervisor about and was then informed he wasn’t my supervisor anymore).
On a more positive note, all of the doors arrived on Friday (28th August), on a not so positive note the glass window in one of the doors (the laundry door) is meant to be obscured glass, its not (par for the course really now isn’t it).
And in a moment of incredibility I discovered that something I asked for to be adjusted on the plan on the 15th of November LAST YEAR has not been done. It managed to slip past me for this long because I foolishly took the word of the person that it was all ok and would be done as I asked. The issue is with the telephone point, initially we had 2 phone lines and a TV point in the house, but then we went with a smartwiring option which removed the need for the builder to supply phone and TV points so I asked for 1 phone line to be removed, the TV line to be removed and the remaining phone line to be moved to the garage (where the smartwiring hub was going). Now silly me figured that since the TV point was removed as asked, as was the second phone point, that the remaining phone point would be in the correct position, instead they have gone and installed it where it was on the original plan.

However I’m not mad at all, in fact I sympathize with them, it really must be hard for the poor little over worked darlings to co-ordinate a house construction when there are so many people involved… To date I have had 7 people involved in the house construction (from designing the floor plan to brick supervisor), 7!! How inefficient can you get? These guys need to attend some seriously hard core Six Sigma training and get their processes fixed, quick time.