Building your own home is a dream for most of the people. It’s a once in a lifetime effort & usually involves huge expenditure. Whether you attain your dream in an easy, smooth way or you are literally tearing your hair apart, depends on selecting the right Contractor.
Now, comes the most difficult part. How to select the right person? For most of the home builders, the most important criteria are labour charges of the Contractor. All contractors charge on a per square feet basis, which now a day is between Rs. 220/- to Rs. 270/-. But apart from fixing the labour rates, the following things should also be kept in mind before finalizing the contractor:
Paper Work
An important criterion is that you should get your building maps prepared by the architect and get structural design done by the civil engineer. Then prepare an exhaustive list of building materials to be used along with the brands before you ask the contractor for his labour charges. Most labour contracts run into disputes because those three parameters are not made clear to the contractor before asking for quote. It’s very necessary to get the architectural & structural drawings detailed out & shown to the contractor before getting the labour rate from him.
Construction Schedules
The construction schedule should be broadly planned out before finalizing the contract. This should accommodate all labour holidays so that realistic dates are finalized beforehand. This way you are knowing beforehand the milestone dates & you can arrange your finances accordingly. Most of the times this is not worked out & leads to stress as the construction period gets stretched. There should be suitable penalty clause for delay in working. Here, the client’s responsibility also arises that he has to provide materials as per need & clear contractor bills in reasonable time, this also should be detailed out.
Supervision
The quality of construction has to be supervised by experienced site engineers/ supervisors. The timely supervision should be carried out & you should be prepared to spend some money on this activity. Penalty clause for poor quality work should be written down in the contract with the contractor.
Quality
It is also necessary to know the quality of work carried out by the contractor in his previous projects. The client experience from these projects with respect to the credibility of the contractor. A running site of the contractor should also be visited to know beforehand the quality of construction work he is capable of.
Now, coming back to the the issue of the labour rate of the contractor. My advice is, you can negotiate to the appropriate rate looking into all the above parameters, but I suggest that you are not too fussy about each and every rupee, be flexible. This is because spread over the area of the residence, it would not be a big amount. Also keep in mind to offer extra for work done on time at the last stage, which motivates the contractor. It shows that you are willing to punish for the poor work and reward for the good work done.
So, by following the above steps, I ensure that you will get all things done within limits with best quality.
