Tradie bashing: valid or not?
SMH Small Business Trends
January 22, 2014
Allen Cetinic

http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/trends/tradie-bashing-valid-or-not-20140122-31868.html


Many consumers prefer tradespeople who are unprofessional. So don't complain next time a tradie fails to meet your expectations.

I have little sympathy for homeowners who use second rate tradespeople, then tell the world about how bad all tradesmen are. The question I’d like to ask is what criteria are they using to make decisions about hiring the right tradesman?

I am a tradesman and can say unequivocally ‘professionalism’ is something few people are prepared to pay for when selecting a tradesperson. Qualifications, reputation, skillset, past knowledge and experiences stand for very little when it comes to comparing quotes. Ultimately, it comes down to who is the cheapest. As a result the industry continues to fail on delivering reasonable standards in workmanship and customer service.

Being ‘professional’ in the building industry is just not worth it to the tradesperson, as it does not translate into business. It’s not appreciated by homeowners until the job goes horribly wrong and they wish they’d paid more for a tradesperson with better experience.

In fact, sometimes promoting a professional image can be counter-effective. A tradesperson can have more chance of winning a job by parading him or herself as vulnerable, uneducated, sloppy and cheap, instead of being professional, thorough, conscientious, honest, caring, diligent and successful.

People don’t want to hire someone who looks successful; instead they want someone who appears down on their luck, desperate for the work and easier to take advantage of at the end of the job when it’s time to pay. In my experience, society has pigeonholed builders and tradesmen as uneducated morons who should be spoken down to, treated with contempt and made to beg for their final payment.

Indeed, lack of security of payment is a huge issue many tradespeople have to endure. These experiences create deep scars that impact their family’s wellbeing, and trigger sometimes paranoid behaviours, that make it hard to come across as ‘professional’.

There is a lot of talk about reforming building codes and standards, industry regulations, customer service and compliance coming from those at the top, but way too little action taken. There are government departments, industry associations and business groups that need to get serious about cleaning up the shonks in the industry by sticking to their words and taking severe action to clean them out.

At the moment, the cost of running a compliant business is significantly greater than running one that’s not compliant. Yet both compliant and non-compliant businesses compete for the same job in the same market. Half the contractors I know are unlicensed, uninsured or operating while insolvent, yet are knee deep in work. But many compliant ones that carry all the compulsory insurances and overheads are sitting idle, unable to land a job.

The industry needs to stop following the path of its past and start providing new, professional service levels that are on par with other service industries. Otherwise, the trades will continue to operate as a black market and never be taken seriously.

Educational institutes such as universities and colleges, which are responsible for issuing trade qualifications, need to include business management in curricula that cover basic accounting, marketing and customer service. Most apprentices coming through the system don’t know what a basic business model is, let alone the true meaning of professional services. And they are the future of the industry.

We are all responsible for changing attitudes and opinions about the building industry. But until we all start respecting tradesman for the qualified individuals they are, we can’t expect professionalism or customer service to improve.

Courtesy also needs to go both ways. It’s a small thing, but when I make contact with someone for the first time, I expect them to look me directly in the eye and show me the respect I deserve as a human being.

On the other hand, if a tradesperson isn’t punctual, fails to answer calls or return messages, can’t provide a clear and detailed quote, asks for cash, doesn’t have an email address, doesn’t have a bank account, can’t provide insurances and doesn’t present well, don’t reward him or her with the job. Continue looking until you find someone that ticks all those boxes. This degree of scrutiny is really the only way to eliminate or at least minimise risk.

Professionalism is more than just a flashy business name or logo, or even a website. It needs to be about the whole package. The industry needs to raise the bar. But it needs the community’s help to know how high to place it.

Allen Cetinic is a director of Render My Home.

The biggest concern homeowners like you have when it comes to choosing their contractor is the risk and uncertainty of having to make a decision that will deliver a successful outcome, ie, a completely stress-free experience, value for money and a job to be proud of.

The building industry is synonymous for being full of contractors and builders who constantly fail to deliver on key areas such as customer service and quality workmanship. Even more disappointing (but true) is that many lack basic personal qualities such as courtesy, integrity and reliability.   

It is important for you to understand that the ‘true cost’ of a job is not necessarily the number that appears on the quotation or invoice for you to pay at the end of the job. There are ongoing costs associated with cheaper products and services that will increase not only the amount of money you need to continually pay for years to come, but also the amount of time, stress, inconvenience and anxiety you will need to deal with in having to restore, repair and/or replace these items.

When making a decision on which contractor to engage, your objective should be to minimise the amount of risk, you as the customer are exposed to. Have I been given the best possible advice on this product? What happens if the contractor does not do what he promises? What happens if the work is faulty and as a result has affected other areas and items? What can I do if I realise at a later date that the contractor mislead me by carrying out the work defectively?

Reputable companies that are highly regarded amongst their industry peers will initially appear more expensive in comparison to other quotes, but the closer you examine the conditions and take into consideration the whole value factor, you will realise that these companies have built their reputations through delivering consistent excellence and commitment towards achieving total customer satisfaction, and will deliver you a better service that will result in greater value for money – no doubt about it!

The ‘Render My Home’ promise to you is this…

Whilst we may not always be the cheapest quote, we will guarantee that our companies’ services will provide you greater value for money than any other competitor.
 
Call us now on 0405 278 369, to discuss with the team at Render My Home, how to best approach your next project.

Engaging a renderer that is unlicensed creates at least two major problems for you as the consumer.

To be entitled to a trade licence means that the contractor has had to undergo an assessment of sorts via an education or training institution and has had his or her skills competently assessed by a trainer or assessor. This is important to you as the consumer, as you need to know whether this person or company are knowledgeable and competent enough to carry out the works adequately and to a suitable standard. If they are not, you are throwing away your money.

The other problem is in relation to compliance and regulation under NSW law. If the contractor does not hold a trade licence, the likelihood that he does not hold valid Workers Compensation or Public Liability policies is also a strong possibility.

That affects you directly in that if a worker was injured or killed on your site, you could be implicated as you were the individual authorising the work to be carried out, and as a result an incident occurred that should never have been allowed to proceed.

As a consumer you must demonstrate due diligence by requesting to see the contractors licence and all relevant insurances before safely engaging them to carry out work on your premises. This protects your consumer rights and reduces any risk you may be exposed to.

I received an inquiry the other day for a ‘small’ remedial job at a commercial property in North Sydney. After meeting the property manager onsite, we closely examined the work and discovered that the job was anything but small!

The first thing that caught my eye was the general poor appearance of the building. There was cracked render pretty much everywhere as well as evidence of concrete cancer coming out of the surface of exposed beams.

Looking up the face of the building we could see exposed concrete slabs on each of the floor levels between the brick walls, that appear to have popped and in the process of falling from off of the building and onto the ground. Not an expansion joint in sight!

Considering the highest point to repair was approximately 10 metres, the emphasis of the remedial work had now shifted to more an OHS risk management exercise, rather than just a ‘small’ cosmetic repair. Any object falling from 10 metres, let alone a chunk of cement render, is likely to kill someone down on the ground.

Now, the question I was asked by the property manager was ‘is it normal for cement render to just fall off a wall, or has something not been done properly during the execution of the work?’

Great question!

The answer is simple, yet for some unknown reason is rarely understood.

It is normal for cement render to delaminate from a substrate such as a concrete structure, if expansion joints have not been installed correctly. Why? Because the forces underneath the render, usually between where the concrete areas meet up with the brick areas, or with some other substrate, are greater than that of the render coating. Any type of natural expansion or contraction in the building WILL result in cracking, and that ultimately leads to delamination and the potential of OHS risks.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds of buildings going up every day in Sydney where this simple practice is not observed by the head building contractor, leading to future remedial work which could have been easily averted.

The problem for the property buyers are that these cracks don’t often surface until several years later, by which time the builder has done the bolt and absolved himself from any liability.

So a ‘small’ enquiry turns out to be not such a ‘small’ job, with the owners now up for about $40,000 to repair the building that should never have needed repairing had someone carried out his job correctly.

It could be much worse though, for if any render were to fall off and kill someone, the consequences would be even more severe!