Contract stages

As anyone who has ever built a house before will know, regardless of the builder, there are many different stages to the process of getting the final contracts completed and Metricon is no different. There are the initial preview statements (Basic estimates), then the Tender presentation completed after initial site investigations and soil testing followed by the building contract after all site investigations are completed but then there is the hydraulic assessments and bushfire variations, the Basixs changes and on and on it goes until the final unconditional contract and building plans are signed off on.

Metricon was sold to us throughout our initial enquiries as the builder that would not hide any costs and would be up front throughout to keep us informed of the price to prevent blow outs. We however found this to be not exactly the case. As we have advanced further and further in, the costs have continued to climb (some through our own additions but many unexpected). We also believed that by building with a large and well respected builder we wouldn’t have to be checking every single detail to ensure accuracy.

Just one example of this checking and fault finding came when we received our initial hydraulic assessment and quote for drainage. Based on the initial provisional sum of $600 in the preliminary contracts we weren’t expecting too many surprises so you can imagine the look on my face when the e-mail arrived with the hydraulic variation and the cost was $4,800. Needless to say this e-mail was followed with a few lengthy phone discussions and some e-mail ping pong. The answer we finally got after many stressful days was ‘we’re so glad you brought this to our attention, it appears to have been an error from the plumber who grossly over charged on the quote’, this “error” highlighted to me the importance of double checking every item we were asked to sign.

We should also mention at this point our thanks to Nathan Cassidy for creating such a detailed and accurate landscape plan for us to submit with our council plans. He has been a great source of advice and reassurance for me throughout this endeavour.

Our plans finally headed into Gosford Council on 10^th May 2011. Unfortunately, as everyone knows, once the plans go into council there is very little that either the builder or the owner can do to speed this process up. So unfortunately at this point the waiting game started.