Editorials
There be dragons outside the box too
By Tom Hatlen
Medieval mapmakers drew dragons and serpents to mark uncharted seas and illustrate the dangers that might await sailors daring to go there. It was crazy enough for them to be sailing the seas at all to add risk by traveling into the greater unknown. But there was also the potential reward and adventure in addition to limited opportunities elsewhere.Thinking outside the box takes contractors into uncharted waters as well. It’s easier to win business by saying “yes” to a potential client rather than waffling or trying to steer them in a different direction.
Saying “yes” won the project on page 10. Being able to find a way to build it and build it well won over the neighbor’s project. It won an HNA Project Award, and it provided a showpiece for Hedge Landscape’s website and marketing materials.
But, if you say “yes” you better have the “horses to pull it.” The project involved using a unique SRW block to build a tall wall that backed up to another wall built to protect a window on the house. There’s also a crawl space behind the tall wall with a wooden deck covered in travertine above that.
Hedge Landscape had the horses to pull it. The designer was degreed in architecture and the contractor was an engineer. But there were still dragons everywhere, even with what looked like the easy part – using a 4” high block.
The clients wanted the look of the low-profile blocks that are typically used along with several blocks of other sizes in an SRW collection. Using a less frequently used block meant Hedge would have to cut their own corner blocks and modify other blocks for tight curves. Some of this they knew, some came as a surprise and none of it was a big deal. But it did take extra man-hours, as did the other unique aspects of the job.
While they started out with a good game plan, it took extra time to pull the walls, deck and travertine structures together on the ground. Learning the Silca System for paving the deck added time. Figuring out how to make the SRW steps up to the wood deck added time.
Taken as a whole, there was a lot of risk in pricing a job like this. To quote Charles Vander Kooi:
“The more risky the job, the greater the profit you should seek. If it’s a ‘piece-of-cake’ job that anybody can do, then anybody and everybody will want to bid it, therefore the profit will be low. But, if it is very difficult, then very few will bid it, and those who do had better go high on the profit because of the risk involved.”
The client is an additional risk in a job like this with potential for significant changes and added expense. Make sure the client understands and is willing to cover additional man-hours. If you don’t feel good about the client’s character, either mark the job up even more or walk away.
Knowing your client, accounting for risk in your pricing and honestly assessing your construction abilities go a long way toward keeping the construction dragons at bay when you venture into the unknown.
