You could take your experience plus some of Eddie's tips and write a book on dealing with contractors. I suspect he structured the draws so that you were pretty stuck with him. If any of us spoke to our bosses at work the way he spoke to you, we'd be on our way to the unemployment office. Goodbye and good riddance to your CM.
Right now, I could provide some info on what not to do when dealing with contractors. I'm hoping we do a better job picking our subs moving forward. Originally getting recommendations for quality contractors was hard. We didn't use the right criteria when we picked the construction manager (CM). He was referred to us by a retired general contractor that I met in our neighborhood. The retired GC highly recommended the CM indicating that the CM was honest with high integrity. However, I'm not sure that the retired contractor had ever used the CM. While the CM seems for the most part to be honest, that doesn't mean he is competant.
So we contacted the CM and got some references. Keep in mind that the CM could easily withhold names of any customers who didn't like him. We did get one warning signal from one of the references the CM gave us. That person gave the CM a favorable recommendation but said we "would have to watch him." Now I know what he meant. Another bad sign was that the CM didn't have any active jobs we could go see. He showed us his own house he built a few years ago. However, we couldn't see the framing work underneath. Sheetrock and siding can hide a lot of bad things.
The framer that we are leaning towards hiring showed us this past Saturday a house still under construction that he had recently finished framing. Comparing this guy's framing quality to our CM's framing was like night and day. All the bad things I noticed about the framing in our house were done well in the house the new framer showed us. Plus, we got to meet the developer/builder for which the framer had built several houses; that builder seemed to really like this framer. In addition, when talking to this potential framer, several times he volunteered that he would do such and such "however we wanted it." I didn't get a sense that I would have to fight this guy to do things my way, even though I'm not a "professional".
A resource that has been helpful to us recently has been to get referrals for subs from subs who did good work for us. We are hoping that workers who do quality work will be somewhat selective when they refer someone. In my own line of work, people who do quality work tend to be careful about who they will recommend. I know that I won't give job recommendations for just anyone. The electrician we are going to use came as a reference from the foundation/poured wall subcontractor who did a real good job for us. This electrician wired the foundation guy's house.
A long time ago, we decided not to use the CM's electrician for a couple of reasons. First, we didn't like the plumber that the CM used for our basement plumbing drains so were suspicious about the quality of the subs he uses. My impression is that the CM has low standards in his work and that he therefore doesn't have high standards for the subs he uses. Secondly, we asked the CM's electrician to give us a bid for the electrical work for our house. Even though we have a detailed electrical plan drawing that shows every light and outlet, the CM's electrician didn't use the plan but gave us a $/square foot bid. Well, that didn't tell me anything at all about the final electrical cost for building OUR house. Plus, it seemed rather lazy to give us a $/SF bid when the electrician could have spent 30 minutes giving us a bid off of the drawings. And I don't like surprises when I get the bill. My experience in the past, whether getting work done on my house or getting a car repaired, has been that everytime I hire someone to do a job without getting a solid bid, the job always ends up costing more than I thought it would cost.
So now we are asking for references for workers from the subs we like and from our building supplier. We have also gotten references from other people who have built houses for themselves but those references haven't panned out so well. Sometimes homeowners don't really know if their contractors/subs are doing quality work. They just know they "liked the guy."
Honestly, I can't imagine how anyone who used our CM to build their house could recommend him if they had any clue about what sound building practices were and what the code book says. However, the CM gave us a handful of names of people who liked the work he did for them. Unfortunately, our CM frequently cut corners and we were constantly having to make him redo stuff. Or we'd have to ask him ahead of time how he was going to build something. For example, if I hadn't pushed it, the CM was going to have the top of the poured concrete basement wall in one corner of the house to be lower than the final grade of dirt. He claimed it would be fine because we would have brick between the dirt and the bottom of the framed wall which would have been below grade. There was no way I was going to have the framing of our house below grade; brick and mortor are not waterproof. I also looked it up in the code book and found that it would be a code violation. That was the first hint I remember that made me start to question the CM's competency.
Getting good subs is one advantage that a good general contractor has over a homeowner like us. However, the assumption is that you have a good general contractor. If we could pick a bad CM, which we did, then we could just as easily pick a bad general contractor. There are good workers and bad workers in every field, GCs are no exception. My parents hired a GC to build their house when I was a kid and the guy did a lousy job. That GC cut corners that caused headaches for my dad for years and years.
Obed
