Delay to building project - advice

Hi guys,

I am looking for some advice. I am currently doing a significant renovation and extension on a house. I have an engineer who is also managing the entire process and a main contractor/builder.

The build started six weeks ago. Inside a week, I got a call from engineer to say that when excavating site for extension there was an issue and the foundations would have to be piled by an outside contractor. We had discussed this possibility in advance (other houses in area have had it done) and we were not too disappointed despite the cost.

Engineer was to get three quotes from third parties and said piling would be started within a week. In the meantime our first child is born so my mind is elsewhere and things start to go off course.

Firstly, it looks like the builder got the quotes rather than engineer and we get a costing (looks like something a QS had put together) rather than a third party quote that is 50% more than discussed. I ask for the actual quote but am fobbed off by engineer. Anyway, I am taking these calls the day our child us born so I just give the green light.

It's over four weeks now since the problem was diagnosed and nothing has been done on the site since. My eye was off the ball with baby and while I contacted engineer to ask three times when piling would start, he fobbed me off via text with 'next week' each time.

Contacted builder directly yesterday and he said pilers had been delayed on another job and would be in as soon as they were done, which he was hoping would be next week. We are now looking at a minimum six week delay to a something that my engineer assured at the outset would cost us a week.

I am concerned at this stage that the builder just pulled his team off the site due to the delay and has gone to another job and there is no incentive for him to get the pilers in and start the job again straight away.

In the meantime, I am paying rent and a mortgage and am looking at at least six weeks longer than planned in rented property. Landlady wants property back and it is not entirely suitable for a small child.

Can anyone suggest how I can resolve this issue? My engineer seems to be avoiding me and is constantly just fobbing me off and my builder keeps telling me that the piling companies are busy and can't make it to site even though we were led to believe that the outset that getting them on site immediately would not be an issue. I don't want to get off on a bad footing with builder but I am starting to believe that he is playing me and I am paying the cost for it in terms of time and money.

Any suggestions as to how we can get things moving again would be great.

Metric Tensor

I think you might have been a little misled at the start regarding the delay that piling would bring about. A full foundation redesign is necessary and the piling company essentially call the shots themselves timewise because they all have plenty of work on - this usually leaves builders jumping to the piler's schedule rather than vice versa - particularly on small jobs.

With regards to the quotes Vs costings - the builder will accrue significant extra costs on top of the direct piling costs due to the change in foundation specification (ground beams, etc) so the direct amount paid to the piler will only be a portion of the overall extra cost. Whether you should be given a breakdown of same depends on your contract type - but the builder may be avoiding giving it to you because he wants to avoid weeks of back and over nit-picking about what charge is for what. Having said that - your engineer, if he truly is truly managing the project for you should be doing that legwork and should be able to advise you of the cost is reasonable or not.

In terms of moving things forward all I can suggest is to organise a face to face with the builder and engineer and push on from there. Keep it as informal as possible to start with in order to keep goodwill in place for now.

Metric Tensor

Metric Tensor wrote: »

I think you might have been a little misled at the start regarding the delay that piling would bring about. A full foundation redesign is necessary and the piling company essentially call the shots themselves timewise because they all have plenty of work on - this usually leaves builders jumping to the piler's schedule rather than vice versa - particularly on small jobs.

With regards to the quotes Vs costings - the builder will accrue significant extra costs on top of the direct piling costs due to the change in foundation specification (ground beams, etc) so the direct amount paid to the piler will only be a portion of the overall extra cost. Whether you should be given a breakdown of same depends on your contract type - but the builder may be avoiding giving it to you because he wants to avoid weeks of back and over nit-picking about what charge is for what. Having said that - your engineer, if he truly is truly managing the project for you should be doing that legwork and should be able to advise you of the cost is reasonable or not.

In terms of moving things forward all I can suggest is to organise a face to face with the builder and engineer and push on from there. Keep it as informal as possible to start with in order to keep goodwill in place for now.

Thanks a million for the advice. Great to get a better understanding of the process and a pity our engineer did not explain it to us as it would have saved the frustration and a stressing about it at a busy time.

I think the engineer knows we are at the pin of our collar financially and was sugar coating things when the problem first arose. It also means that I was probably unfairly assuming that the builder was suiting his own needs or pushing us for extra money.

I am meeting the engineer next week in person. I think it was a lack of communication on his part that exacerbated the issue as he is being paid to be our point of contact with the builder. Hopefully things can get going again asap as we can't afford any more delays.

Just to update this, the piling company and the main building contractor were both on site on Tuesday and are ploughing ahead with work on both fronts.

While I understand I underestimated the time (my engineer did, in fact) it would take them to come in, I don't think it was a coincidence that the work all started up again very soon after I started questioning both my builder and engineer and had asked to see both in person.

Now to deal with a row between my neighbours and the builder over parking. The never-ending joys of renovating a house!!

Metric Tensor

Thanks for the update. We don't always get them here!