Meanwhile back on site…..What Keeps People Up At Night?
I often wondered about that. I mean a lot.
So much so that it was possibly one of the five questions I most often asked builders, trades, project suppliers, and home building and home renovating consumers too.
Naturally, for different people in differing roles in the building ecosystem, there’s a different answer.
But I remember asking Pete (home builder, nice guy) that question one day.
It was a really cold winter morning. Real cold, fog in your breath cold, frost on the ground that crunched underfoot (but up close it resembled a miniature of the ice forest beyond the wall in Game of Thrones) cold, three layers of clothes cold, which, despite the single digit temperature, you knew they wouldn’t last until morning tea.
We were building a deck on a house (along with a million other things). It was about 9.30 am when one of the subbies arrived with a recycled cardboard tray bearing coffees, and a bag of egg and bacon rolls. The breakfast of champions!
He announced “brekkie”.
With that, every head turned excitedly. Tools fell like they’d been tasered.
Soon Pete and I were sitting on some bearers with our faces into the sun, sipping coffee and eating our late breakfast. We talked about nothing in particular, until I decided to ask him “I don’t think I’ve ever put this question to you but I’d like to know what it is that keeps you up at night Pete?”
His response was to break out laughing.
Eventually he said, still chuckling “mate I’ve got daughters, what more do you want to know?”
I said, a little sternly “no seriously, I mean as a builder, what makes you sit up worrying?”
He rolled his eyes at me. I think I got his point about daughters, do you ever stop worrying?
Then he said “there’s one very simple answer Hux….MONEY.” He didn’t spell it, he didn’t say it in capital letters either, but his emphasis was impossible to avoid.
It wasn’t just the issue, it seemed it was the only issue.
I pondered that for a short while and asked him “so when you say money…”
He cut me off (he’s not normally this rude, I let him continue) and said “Hux, the clients! It’s their show, it’s their money and my money’s on the line, all the time. It’s getting progress claims made, getting invoices paid, paying subbies and suppliers. Tone, it’s the circle of Life, it’s the whole Yin Yang thing, blah, blah, blah…..it’s the money.”
I got it, but I knew I needed to dig deeper, despite his simple assessment.
“Pete, I understand all that, but why does that keep you up at night?”
Fair dinkum, he looked at me like I’d just shot someone and exclaimed “how would it not!”
“Mate, I get it but what I’m asking is whether it’s the flow of money, the receipt of it, the scale of it, the interdependencies of it….I don’t know, the smell of it. I mean, in and of itself money is a word and it can be easily defined, but you’re using it like it’s an adjective. I’d be grateful for some definition.”
He smiled and nodded, sipped his latte and he said to me “I like that word, interdependencies.”
He studied me for a short while, sipped his coffee and asked “do you remember Ker Plunk?”
I thought “WTF?” but instead I said “you mean the old kid’s game?”
He nodded, smiling at me like I had a screw loose and feeling sorry for me. He said “for a builder, money is like Ker Plunk, because it’s all about interdependencies and man it’s often a really tenuous balancing act, but it’s definitely anything but a game!”
I think I was beginning to get what he was saying but, seriously, this was like pulling teeth!
I stood up, sighed and said to Pete “back to it mate, can we bookmark this until lunch.”
Two and a half hours later I’d gone and bought coffees and returned to the site to a hero’s welcome, naturally (anyone bearing coffee does, believe me, I’ve seen it often!).
Then Pete and I sat together again, with fresh hot coffees and our respective lunches for part two of Interdependencies 101.
Just as I sat and before I got to segue from our morning tea chat, Pete was off and running, saying “money is happiness Hux, but I don’t mean that as greedily as it sounds.”
He never struck me as having a greedy streak; I understood the point.
He said “when you have responsibility, when your home is on the line on a daily basis, such is the nature of building, when all that risk weighs on your mind mate, I promise you, THAT’S what keeps you up at night. That and my girls” he chuckled but I didn’t think he was being funny, not at all.
But then he lobbed a bit of pragmatism that was inarguable and which has become part of my development objectives for our technology ever since, and it’s stuck to me like super glue. He said “as a builder, achieving happiness…here I go with interdependencies again…I discovered it’s about ensuring the client is always aware and always happy. Even with bad news, and that’ll happen, because, you know, life but just being aware, keeping them informed, resolves that. It’s that simple, believe it or not, and I know so believe me, when you do then the money is never an issue” he explained slowly.
He continued saying “by that I mean MONEY (with emphasis) isn’t allowed to become an issue where the client is aware and happy, because a happy client pays their bills, happily. You got it?”
I got it.
All I could say in response was “ker plunk.”
© Tony Huxley 2020
