#practical completion

We had our Practical Completion inspection this morning and it largely went off without a hitch. The only issues that were brought up was a major one to do with the timber stacker door at the back of the rumpus room - like I mentioned earlier, the wrong one was made without the screens. The whole door and frame will need to be removed and the new installed. This may not happen before handover but we've been told it will be noted as an action item post handover.

We didn't pick up too much else but mentioned the missing site peg for our neighbours lot. Initially the ss didn't think it was his responsibility until we showed him on their plans that a site peg was found and as such should be replaced. It didn't seem like he wanted to take on that responsibility but we think we got agreement out of him to at least put a peg there where it was missing - I'll just need to cut the grass marking back site peg.

We booked in a handover date for the 1st of March at 9:30am which is 2 weeks from today. After the inspection, we spoke to our building inspector who picked up quite a few little things that neither of us would have even noticed. Most of it seems minor like little dents or toilet seats loose. The biggest ones I can think of are that the tops and bottoms of the doors aren't painted but should be and one of the rails in a bedroom isn't level. I spoke to our ss before we left and said we'd forward the list to him and he mentioned that they will look at it but aren't obliged to fix everything that's been pointed out. I sure hope for quality sake that they do fix almost everything on that list as it gave the vibe that he didn't really want to do more than he thinks he is expected to for this job.

After the inspection we went and organised delivery for the tiles, carpet and also ordered curtains and vertical blinds for the house. We had ramen at a nice little but busy place in Sunnybank where go regularly and then the final activity for the day was looking for a new door handle for the main entrance. We think we've found the right size handle that will fit OK. Unfortunately due to the position the manufacturer put the door lock, the door handle guy reckons it limited the choice and size because it was in an awkward and strange position. We've settled for a 300mm handle of the same style as the previous one but they didn't have any in stock so it should be there for us to give to the ss on Monday. The original door handle that was fitted was 750mm so it's a big size difference.

Tomorrow is the day we do our practical completion walkthrough with our site supervisor. Should be an interesting and busy day as we also have the bank valuer and our qa inspection guy coming around the same time as well. I was told this morning that the replacement door is due to arrive tomorrow with installation on Wednesday, we'll just need to provide the handle for them to install for us. We'll be doing that after the walk through.

I was told that the timber stacker door that was supplied was actually the wrong one - it's supposed to have the fly screen built in but ours doesn't. The door is currently on order and being manufactured but he doesn't think it will be done in time for handover. He said he'll be making a note that this is one of the things that will need completed after hand over.

SS called today to book in the PC walk through. It's scheduled for Tuesday 9:30am. He also heard back from management regarding the door handle issue.

It seems that managements decision is that inaction is better than customer satisfaction. In other words, Metricon have decided to do nothing about the door situation.

Stopped by the house this afternoon to get more quotes on fence and retaining wall and driveway. I think Lee is starting to get tired of all this organising and I was well and truly over it ages ago. Getting the house completed is only half the battle won it seems.

Today it looks like the cleaner has been through again cleaning the exterior of the house and the painter has been back to touch up on all the red dots. There is no where near as many as there was last week and it looks like the timber doors have been re-stained again though who we wonder if it was in vain if they have to be replaced. The piping to the water tank has also been painted.

We think that the developer behind us may have fixed the issue where he was diverting water down through us instead of the proper drain as it was raining a little bit today and was very overcast and there was even less water than yesterday on our site. The little trench that I dug out was completely dry.

Spoke to our SS this morning after a 2 week absence of communication. He was telling me that the cleaners were coming onsite soon to clean up the rubbish at the front and also asked if I wanted to keep the pallet and half of bricks out the back (yes).

I asked him about the issues that I had emailed earlier in the week, namely the timber stacker door fly screen which he said he checked the contract and realised that there should be one so he has to organise that. There was also the issue of the mirrors that were supposed to be raised from the vanity and he said he had picked that up and was already organising it.

I asked him if he had a date for PC yet and he says he still needs to work stuff out but reckons it is about a week and half away. Not sure what he needs to work out, I mean you either know when you will reach PC or you don't By our calculations, the 16th is the date for when PC is due under the 15 week guarantee (including the extra 20 days that they claimed during construction).

Finally I asked him about the door handle situation and he told me that it had apparently been passed up to management to decide and when he last checked with them on Wednesday, they had yet to make a decision on what to do about it.

Pretty simple in my mind, you either don't give a shit about customer satisfaction and not do attempt to resolve the situation or you resolve it for the sake of a customer satisfaction.