Building with Rawson - delays?

Hi guys,

I just want to see if anyone is having the same experience building with Rawson as us. We are currently trying to build a Shorehaven 35 in Sydney through Rawson. We are currently in the pre-construction stage and I can honestly say it has been quite slow and frustrating. I have read a lot of great things about Rawson and the sales process seemed to be quick and went smoothly.

Unfortunately post-signing the tender, our coordinator has been less than responsive. We are currently in month 8 of our pre-construction process and we are no where near obtaining CDC approval. Our house is not complex at all, just a few changes. Drafting/estimating takes at least 2 weeks for any type of change - our latest issue was we had to narrow the driveway (which Rawson is not building) to obtain the right hydraulics configuration. We drew out the drafting plans for Rawson in the exact architectural format that Rawson uses... Rawson took 2 weeks to reflect this in their plans. Any change takes at least 2 weeks or more. We are due to demolish in 8 days and we have not got plans signed off for the new house (Rawson insists that the demo date is fine). Our coordinator does not respond to emails nor phone calls and we have gone to the lengths of using different phone numbers to get our coordinator to pick up. We have not even laid one brick or disturb any soil on the site.

Has anyone else had the same amount of issues with Rawson? If so, what did you do about this?

I went through a similar situation (with another builder) whereby I was told to go ahead with the demolition as the CDC will be approved any moment now and the build process will start within 6 weeks. Big mistake, if I hadn't demolished the house, and started paying rent, I would have pulled the plug. While CDC was indeed approved 1 week later, I was hit with some exorbitant hydraulic variation costs after that, and a delay of 6 months worth of admin. My advice, do not demolish the house until you have everything finalised (final PCV, CDC, etc). Demolition takes 1-2 weeks max and the builder needs 6 weeks to get ready to go on site anyway (ordering materials, etc).

Thanks for your advice Boro. We feel very uncertain about this demolition. We asked Rawson at least 4 times whether to demolish and they insisted that this is now the right time, even before we get all our plans finalised. So far Rawson's timeline has been blowing out and out and out.. the only saving grace is that Rawson gave us a 'max you pay' provisional clause in our contract (i.e the site costs won't be above the initial tender). Has anyone had this clause in their contract but yet the variations/later changes have resulted in an additional costs?