Housebuilders just don’t care

During the past 30 years, enough studies have been conducted on defects in house building. There is plenty of guidance available to housebuilders, too. The NHBC’s construction manuals include a snagging checklist for the site agent to use prior to hand-over, even though the term ‘snagging’ appears to have been spun out of the housebuilders’ vocabulary. The ‘pre-occupation walkround’ by the prospective customer is now dressed up as a ‘how to use your product’ visit. In all likelihood, though, the harassed site agent will not have conducted a thorough examination of the product in accordance with NHBC guidelines. The housebuilders might as well come out and say: “If you can spot our defects, we may get around to fixing them.”

Anecdotal evidence would suggest that builders at the top-end have closer control of their supply chain, direct labour and more stringent quality assurance. The volume builders do less well, but it hardly matters because the sector is awash with money. The excessive profit being made by the housebuilders (one need only look at remuneration for housebuilder CEOs) has meant they don’t bother to apply lean construction principles at site level. Shareholders profit from Gordon Brown’s macroeconomic policy and smart land bank purchasing, not because of efficiency in site processes. Thus there is little need for further research on defects. Housebuilders know all about them but choose to ignore the root cause because current margins can be maintained.

Executive-level ignorance

The top brass appear not to know what is taking place at the sharp end of their businesses. “I want to compare the building sector to the car industry,” wrote David Knight, MD of Bryant Homes Scotland, foolishly in the Sunday Herald last August. “You don’t expect to buy a new car these days and have it scratched or damaged. We want people to unwrap their new home and find that everything is perfect. If you spend £250,000 on a house you shouldn’t expect snagging.”

I bought a Bryant house and this makes me gag (and all my neighbours too, I suspect). Middle management gatekeepers keep embarrassing and fundamental mistakes from being communicated upwards. Indeed, the higher echelons of these companies, particularly the finance directors, exacerbate the problem by dictating when properties will be made available for moving in. Site agents have only partial control of scheduling production. As often as not, planning consent dictates output, leading to production spurts – and defects.

Quality standards are taken up by marketing departments - but not on site

Mike murray

Quality Assurance, ISO 9000 and Total Quality Management are taken up by the marketing departments, but not on site. Moreover, NHBC and Building Control inspections don’t protect customers from faulty goods.

The result is an industry sector that should be ashamed of itself. New homes come off the production line with costly defects. These costs are built into the projected margins of both house builder and suppliers in a win-win solution. But the purchaser and society lose out, the purchaser through inconvenience and society through environmental damage caused by additional plant movement on site, return journeys to site and wastage.

I say this to the culprits: by all means instruct your PR managers to draft an indignant reply. But better still, make a cold call to your sites and witness the fat in the production system. Look at your suppliers who take tea and lunch in their vans, look at the litter adjacent to these vans, and look at the emissions from their running engines. Reflect on whether defects are due to poor site welfare provisions and an inability to develop an integrated trade supply chain. Reflect on whether you care. And stop relying on Gordon Brown for your healthy profit margins!