Who is Your Contractor? Your family members or the professionals?

Choosing your contractor is one of the most difficult decisions to make, choosing rightly

will help the overall success of the project, from experience, clients choose from these people.

(i)Building professionals

(ii)Family members that are laymen

(iii)Family members that are building professionals and

(iv)Businessmen contractors

Of the four groups listed above (i) and (ii) happens to tower above (ii) and (iv) and they all

have advantages and disadvantages over one another.

For a client that doesn't know anything about building, no.(i) is your best bet a professional

may charge high fees but he will not compromise on standard when building your house because he

knows quite well that his reputation is at stake and if he does your job well then you may refer

him to your friends and this may lead to big things for him. So for a professional, quality is

always paramount though you may spend more.

(ii)Family members that are laymen may not be the right people to use however if the integrity

of the person involved has been tested overtime, he may serve as your eye on the site. All money

needed for materials will pass through him and he goes along with workers on site to purchase

these materials, whatever is recommended he has to monitor the purchase of materials together

in otherwords he monitors how money is been spent and progress on site.

This may save you some money, but if you have a bad relative unfortunately this method will

backfire because he will want to lord it on the workers to use substandard materials so that he

can make profit for himself.

Another disadvantage is that they can't easily see a bad job in progress, so anything

constructed is always acceptable to them untill is too late.

(iii)Family members that are building professionals are most favoured after all is your money if

your are been ripped off by your family then the charges will be small compare to an outsider

except if the person in question is fraudulent you can easily call on him even years after the

house has been built to help you do one thing or the other without extra charges.

Well you are also helping your family member to grow professionally.

The disadvantage is that if the job is poorly done you may not be able to make him pay for the

poor job done. Your financial strenght and weaknesses is also exposed.

(iv) The last which is businessmen contractors are the worst of the lot to give your project to

. They parade themselves about as building contractors without any formal or informal training

but they have some money from other businesses so they use that to set up an office and seek

for contracts.

The primary motive of this group is profit every other things are secondary including the

stability or success of the building. This group is worst off when it comes to using substandard

materials.

So in all the four above no (i) still seems to be the safest because the contractor can be

called to question anytime, he can be reported to the controlling body of his profession and

professionally he won't do anything unethical so that he can be recommended for other jobs.