The home is just about finished, and closing is within reach. Relief for the superintendent, right? Not yet. In order to get the home across the finish line, there is a laundry list of miscellaneous “punch list” items that need to be tackled. Whose job is it to get these done?
“It’s the Superintendent’s Job.” Many see it this way, but the reality is that Supers are stretched much too thin. In today’s environment, every house has a different recipe which requires more supervision to ensure that things get built right. Superintendents today are carrying far more houses than they should, and they’re lucky to even get IN to look at all of their homes in a given day or week; much less tackle items on that home’s To Do list. “It’s the Trades’ Job.” Trades need to be held accountable to do 100 % of the work that they were hired to do and deliver on their contractual obligations. This sounds good, but it’s not often the reality. Not every trade is committed to the level of quality that is required to get the job done right the first time. In an ideal world, the builder has sufficient field staff to walk their homes daily (or more), and make sure that trades are completing their scopes of work before leaving the jobsite. Unfortunately, this level of oversight and supervision is a time-consuming task that Superintendents just don’t have time for.
Where does this leave us?
This leaves us with homes that are close to completion but aren’t yet ready to be delivered to homeowners. If it’s the trades’ responsibility to bring it across the finish line, it’s a difficult scramble to get trades to come back to complete what they should have done in the first place. If it’s the Superintendents’ job, there is a serious time constraint. Additionally, opening the door to completing the work that trades were supposed to do can snowball. Before you know it, supers and assistant supers are touching up paint, installing cabinet hardware, sweeping floors, and a host of other tasks that there is simply no time for. (And this isn’t the job that they were hired to do.)
This is a long-standing challenge that every builder must deal with. Does a builder hold every trade accountable to completely execute all they are contracted to do, or does the builder need to be ready to complete some of this work with its own staff?