Dear Editor,
In a letter which appeared in SN on Sept. 7 `How to avoid a nightmare when building your house’, the author stated that he was building his house but apparently has had some unsavory experiences with several persons whom he interacted with during its construction and out of the goodness of his heart he has written to SN to share his “great adventure experience in house building,” because many of those he had to deal with had hidden agendas.
Unfortunately, the author has taken a simplistic view of a complex industry – construction, and has suffered because of his inexperience and lack of knowledge as to how construction of a structure is formulated and executed. To start with he should have had a plan, bill of quantities, specifications and a cost estimate. To prepare these documents for his house he would have required skilled personnel such as architects and engineers. Further, there would have been need for a building supervisor to ensure that the contract requirements are fulfilled. Therefore, building a house in accordance with generally accepted standards does not come cheap but prevents unwanted headaches as the author experienced.
In Guyana, a relatively poor country, most simple structures such as houses are usually built by, “fly by night contractors”. Therefore, Guyanese with limited resources shop around for the cheapest of these to build their dream houses. These contractors generally have limited skills and resources but can prepare rudimentary sketches, quantity of materials needed and a rough estimate of the cost for the assignment (material + construction). Construction is generally negotiated as a lump sum cost while all other costs are expected to be met by the owner.
The author seemed to have confined his observations dealing primarily with the contractor and failed to comment on the other important players in his house building such as those who have to prepare the plans, materials needed and their estimated costs, payment schedules, etc. Quite rightly it is important to have a good, competent and honest contractor build your house but he has to do so within the limits of his contract. If there is no contract, then ‘it’s a free for all’, and the house owner cannot instruct the contractor to do what he thinks should be done without mutual agreement.
Finally, the author in his closing remarks stated that the best single piece of advice he received prior to building his house and wished to share was, “don’t trust anyone”. This statement is somewhat contradictory, since a house or any other structure for that matter cannot be built successfully without the parties having trust in each other. If the contractor is a shady character, he should not be given the job to start with as any assignment given to such a person is unlikely to be finished as expected because of the many problems which are likely to develop and eventually become intractable. Case in point is construction of the St. Rose’s High School on Church Street.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan