How often do you visit your site?

Is your new house located in one of the hot spots too?

Actually i currently live in one of the hot spots. New house is in another suburb which is not part of the list but is not too far from where i currently live.

As often as possible as builders are often guilty of shortcuts. In my case the Afghan bricklayers forgot to add in the 20mm spacers (the need for speed!) to the cavity insulation for the essential air gap in the cavity and despite lots of photos no compensation was offered, just an email to say from now on those spacers will be installed, which still was not the case.

It took a complaint to the Building Commission (WA) to have the builder then do an equivalent job for me in lieu of compensation. Not putting the spacers in reduces the R-rating from R1.8 down to R1.2 or 0.6, so I had asked for 1/3rd of the cost of the total insulation cost, which I got. The builder claimed lack of spacers will make no difference. I sent a letter to the insulation company claiming to be an owner builder using their product and asked them if it would make any difference in R value leaving the spacers out. Had I told them the builder is leaving the spacers out, the company would have supported their customer in their answer.

One large beam was not tied properly to the wall and was pointed out and fixed with a second wall tie. The garage has had the ceiling put in but no insulation and it will be a hard task to place the batts in through a small opening from the rest of the house and six metres into the far corners.

Same here, location is in VIC and we are currently in stage 3 restriction. We are at the beginning of finishing stage and I have requested with our builder if we can meet our supervisor to see our build progress and to check if nothing is missed at this stage. Unfortunately my builder has told us that due to restriction, HIA has advised that clients can only visit their site at each completion of the stage which in our case is the final stage.

Anyone here who are in the same boat? Or any opinion on this?

Thanks

The HIA and MBA will always support the builder and not you. Builders are supposed to have regular meetings with you at the end of certain stages, so have a look at your contract. I will have a tile meeting soon, but I am in WA, so I cannot speak for other states.

It is evident, builders do not like clients noticing faults and then complaining about it.

hey we are also facing similar issue, Henley advice us we cannot visit the site till 20 Aug and we are expecting to finish our completion stage by that time or near to finish as this stage was started 2 weeks ago.

Let's see if anything changes, but with the current situation and increasing cases we don't think there will be any ease of restriction soon.

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Hi Elizabeth we are not allow to visit site for next 6 weeks which is ending on 13 Sep, we are hoping to get the house finish by that time if everything goes ok.

To all building in Melbourne,

Are builders still required to have 1 trade out on site? Our builder has told me that the delay was due to this. For small scale industry, I thought no more than 5 per site. If you have the link that you can share about this would be great. Thanks

Hi Firstbuild20

There is no restrictions on number of workers at the moment. Who is your builder? I think builders are getting too busy now with new customers and work is getting delayed due to overload.

Been going once a week atm

May I ask you a question, guys?

When you do a site visit - what is a purpose of that?

Are you trying to notice any issues to make a builder fix them?
But I assume one has to be a qualified builder to be able to do that.
Or it is just pure interest and nothing more?

Cheers.

It is highly recommended that you visit your building site and when there take photos of everything. If you do see an issue discuss with your builder and if no joy, the Building Surveyor. Far too many houses are being built not according to Regulations, Standards, Codes etc.
Even better hire a private building inspector/building consultant, one that knows what to look for.

Construction can continue

https://www.vba.vic.gov.au/about/coronavirus

Does anyone know if we can go beyond 5 km to visit our building site for PCI? I'm thinking it's not allowed but then it is kinda essential to progress the build to completion. Any thoughts?

Nearly go to site daily as we just can't help ourselves, but we live one suburb over so it is often a place for us to go for walks or bike rides. Our kids school is in the same suburb also so its easy to go past after drop off etc.

We never go inside the fence though just looking from the outside to see progress which will get a bit harder now most of the exterior is done.

Builders must just love the new virus restrictions, which may stop you from site visits and which the police may enforce, but I live in WA, so I cannot comment.

My builder had it in the contract that I cannot visit the site without the building supervisor, which is rubbish as he never gave me his mobile and is a busy man. My client contact was not accessible, not even via the supplied mobile no. So I need to ring reception for her to call me back, which may be a day late, then I would have to make an appointment with the supervisor, etc.
I called her the "buffer" as like in the navy, no navy officer needs to speak directly to lower ranks as our officers are trained in the style of British navy officers!

To counter this inaccessibility, I gave the builder a legally worded indemnity for any claims while I was on site, which was rejected verbally, so I visited as often as possible to check and found many short cuts. A building inspector would only arrive to check at stage completions and then it would be too late to repair and too costly, so expect the builder to brush off any repairs, unless you are willing to go to court. Take photos to take it to the Building Commission which I had to do.

Wow, I didn't realise the virus had such an impact on building.
But you're right, sometimes builder's are very hard to get hold of once you've signed on the dotted line.
When we built our house in 2012, we asked for three windows at the front of the house ( we have a very big void in the entry ) to have sliding windows as opposed to fixed glass. Guess what happened? they installed the fixed one. When we complained to the site supervisor he said there was nothing they could do as the windows were already installed. It's been 10 years now since we moved in, & there's not a day that goes by that I regret that we didn't take the matter further & rectify the problem. So my advice to anyone who sees something wrong in their build is fix it, it may take longer to complete the build, but the outcome will be worth it.

When signing either a HIA or MBA contract, be aware that you don't automatically have access to the site. The public isn't allowed on construction sites for "safety reasons". It doesn't matter if it's your land or not - when you hand over the site to the Builder, they take complete control. They decide whether you can get in.

The builders worry that having the clients on site too much will give them ideas for making changes and slow down progress. While you are waiting for your new home to be built, it's normal for you to want to check it out and make sure you are happy with it!

You can add a clause to your contract that allows you to visit the site within 24-48 hours. You'll need the Builder to show you around. Most builders are cool with that. Generally, it's best to pay a building inspector to approve every claim. Having a trained eye look out for snags gives you peace of mind. The inspectors can report back to you any problems they find in the builders' work.

Hope this helps anyone on this thread!

In my case , every weekend 'coz it's a bit far..

It was actually in my contract to have to contact the manager for a site visit, so I gave the company a quasi legal waiver if an accident happens, but they did not want to accept it, so I visited as often as possible while workmen were on site. The roofer said tom watch as something might fall!

Best to visit as often as possible as shortcuts are frequent. Take your phone and make photos. It is your largest expenditure in life, so it pays to safeguard your interests.

Each state has a building commission where you can make a complaint if the builder hesitates too long. Some trades get screwed, so ensure you do not. Most trades are "cheaper" 457 visa holders and they do a good job, but nothing is guaranteed.