And so we come, to the end of all things.

Well, I haven't been sent to jail. The PCI Meeting on Friday was fairly trouble free and successful. It didn't get off to the best of starts though, our inspector for some reason thought the meeting was at 2:30 as opposed to 2:00, so he was late arriving.

Our supervisor was already there when we turned up, fitting the bathroom door of all things. We went through each room together and I pointed out everything that was obvious to me that needed a touch up (things like scratched window frames, chips in the plaster work etc, leaking toilet!?) and he was quite happy noting everything down on his record sheet. We ended up filling 2 pages, which may sound like a lot but really they were all minor things. Then the inspector turned up and he went around by himself and filled up 4 pages of things to fixed, far far more detailed then I was.

Afterwards he took the supervisor around and pointed out he major things he didn't like, like the fact that the paint work on the ceiling was patchy (considering it's white paint on white gyprock I was impressed that he picked that up, but he was right, if you look very carefully it is patchy).

It all seemed very amicable and the supervisor left promising to get the things fixed over the next 10 days or so.

I then spoke to my Client Liason Officer on Monday and arranged to pick the keys up this Friday (subject to the bank approving the Progress Payment of course - current status on that is that its been approved as of today), the only condition on picking up the keys so quickly is that I do not rekey the garage door lock until Ventura has finished, so not as to restrict access for the tradesmen, and since all I am doing for the next 3 weeks is having tradesmen of my own in and out of the house that's ok with me.

So the big question, how do I feel now about Ventura, now that the stress is over and its practically complete?
Hmm...

I think an 5 out of 10 is a fair score, based solely on my observations and experiances.

Pros
They spent a lot of time with us designing our house at no cost.
They provided an Interior Designer to help us sort out our colours.
The roof timbers are excellent in their construction.

Cons
The brickwork is barely adequate in some places (in one case we are asking them to remove an entire external row of bricks along the window sill due to poor laying on the inspectors advice).
The green staining on the bricks is quite extensive and makes the house look like crap. Ventura's line is that its not their fault and it is just part of the brick and they suggest we try spraying bleach on the stains. Bollocks.
The plumber wins the prize for causing the most errors during the construction (taps installed on wrong walls, taps in the wrong positions, gas points in the wrong positions, cutting power cables with re-laying gas points and so on...).
I had 3 different supervisors in the time it took to build my house, problems bought up with 1 supervisor had to be bought up again with each new supervisor.
There appeared to be to be a complete lack of communication (or even a desire to communicate) with the client, nearly all communication had to be initiated by me.
Absolutely no desire to be pro-active about possible risks (there is no concept of Risk Management as far as I can tell). Even when I raised concerns about potential issues they wouldn't worry about it until the issue eventuated. Its such a waste of time its weird they don't take it more seriously.

I'm overall happy with my house, but disappointed at specific parts of it, mainly the stains.

Am I still going to write a tirade on my Customer Survey form (as I mentioned I would do a couple of times in this Blog)?
Yes I am. It may not be as haranguing as I pictured earlier on (heat of the moment and all that...) but I am still going to let them know what I think of their concept of client relationships and risk management to name just a few.


I guess there are still a few things to write and a few more blog entries to go before I truly move into my new home so I haven't finished just yet, but things are certainly coming to a close