Great Expectations: Clients Are From Mars, Contractors Are From Venus
Great Expectations: Clients Are From Mars, Contractors Are From Venus
Ships In The Night
The Architecture/Construction/Engineering industry is such a unique industry in many ways. As a former project manager, and now designer and construction consultant, I have seen all/most sides of this industry and have experienced first or second hand that the biggest hurdle for a harmonious and successful project is a mountain of expectations. How do you hurdle a mountain, you ask? Well you don’t, you climb it one step at a time. There is no silver bullet here, folks. But by the end of this blog post, we should have actionable items, and a roadmap of how to get to the other side safely.
Ultimately, what we’re talking about is expectations from two different groups, and how their misalignment can cause problems. I’m going to focus on the contractor and the client, because architects and engineers, while not perfect, have more straightforward scopes and generally understand that they are service providers a bit more clearly. With our contractor and client, we have two entities that really don’t know much about each other and what they do, and that’s where our problems begin.
What We Know
Imagine we have a client that needs a medium sized home renovation done on their family home. They don’t know anyone in contracting, but a friend has a friend that just used a contractor, and didn’t have “horrible things to say” about their experience. Good enough, it seems. So by all accounts, the client knows nothing about the contractor, and the contractor knows nothing about the client. Breaking it down elementally, the client knows that this person or company has the expertise to complete a home renovation of their size and scope, and the contractor knows the client is willing to exchange their money for their home renovation. These facts are all we know at this point, so information beyond this must be acquired.
What We Don’t Know
Of the home renovation, the client (often) doesn’t know or understand:
How to accomplish the tasks involved in the renovation
What steps or sequences are required to complete the renovation
What type of quality is realistic for their budget
How much their renovation wish list will cost
How long their desired scope of work will take
What expertise is required to complete the individual tasks in their renovation
Having little understanding of these items is completely understandable. You can watch HGTV for a year and still have no idea how to renovate a house. You may also have misaligned expectations about how much everyone smiles and how good looking the trades are, but you’ll find that out soon enough. So if clients generally don’t understand these things, how do they acquire this knowledge? SOMEONE TELLS THEM! Who should that someone be? The CONTRACTOR!
Of the client, the builder (often) doesn’t know or understand:
What the client’s quality expectations are vs their budget
What the client’s communication style is
What the client’s communication expectations are (mode, frequency)
What the clients expectations are with respect to time, budget
The Great Divide
This information should ALL be communicated or discussed in the initial meeting between the client and the builder. Between the client and the builder, there is only one expert in this field, and it’s the builder. Clients are wading into a world that they know little about, and they don’t know what questions are appropriate to ask or where they might be overstepping, so they will often look to the builder to drive this conversation. In the initial meeting, the builder should provide answers to all of the information that the clients don’t know, even if they don’t ask. A mistake I see builders make, is they assume that if the clients don’t ask, they know the answer. Often clients are hesitant to ask as this world, and sometimes contractors themselves, can be intimidating.
The great divide here occurs because many contractors don’t see the client as a customer in the old fashioned sense, and they don’t realize the client is looking for an ally, not an adversary.
Imagine you get a new job in a new city, and you need to buy a house in a city you don’t live in. Your first call will be to a real estate agent in that city. You’ll rely on that agent for their expertise and inside knowledge of that city. You’ll want to know based on your budget where the best area of town is for you to live, what kind of house will suit your needs the best, and you’ll rely on the agent to curate a collection of homes for you to look at. Inherent in this relationship is the fiduciary duty of the agent to act in your best interests. The agent is going to help you and guide you and ideally give you a great experience, as that industry relies heavily on referrals for client acquisition. Sound familiar? The best contractors understand this relationship well. They communicate clearly, and make the client feel valued. They understand that construction projects can be positive experiences for all parties. Their projects can end in friendship and glowing recommendations.
Bridging The Gap
So how do we bring these two groups together? It’s incumbent on the contractor to drive this bus. Not to read clients’ minds and preemptively answer all their questions, but to create an environment where clients feel comfortable to ask the “dumb” questions. Half of my job as a PM was to explain prior to construction or a specific task, why it was necessary, who does the task, and essentially be part teacher. Clients appreciate it, as often they feel a part (not apart) of the process and feel more agency. The worst thing a client can feel is that their construction project is happening TO them, and they have lost control of this runaway train. They don’t know what’s happening now, and they don’t know what’s happening next. All they do is pay the bills that are sent to them.
The best contractors treat clients like a realtor would. They understand their client’s fears and do their best to find out what the client’s expectations are, and align them with the reality of the project BEFORE the project or task. Knowing that clients may not know the appropriate questions to ask, contractors can be curious and ask the questions relating to the issues I outlined above. Questions are free, and managing expectations is the single most important part of this business. Managing expectations can be the single difference between a client singing your praises or a scathing review on google. The most important part of this relationship is making the client feel like everyone is pulling on the same rope, in the same direction, and managing client expectations as early as possible is paramount. If you’re telling clients after the project that their expectations were misaligned, it’s way too late.
So let’s be proactive, over communicate before under communicate, and make sure we can be the best versions of ourselves. The mountain of expectations gets a little smaller with every step we take.
Thanks for reading…
Aaron