The timing of this though is really quite apropos as I am in the midst of having my front yard landscaped with a big pool, retaining wall and all that goes with it. I have a pool contractor (who I won’t mention by name) and a landscape contractor (who I will mention by name) and the difference between the two is worth noting.

The pool contractor would normally show up at the beginning of each phase, do a walk through with the sub or crew and then go on to the next project. He was never there for very long and was usually in a hurry to get to the next job site for, I presume, for more of the same.

Most recently he stopped by just before the concrete pouring. There he quickly ‘eye-balled’ the placement of the diving board. The concrete was then poured, solidifying its position. Now, the pool is a straight rectangle, so a tape measure should have been the tool of choice and whaddya know . . . the diving board is off center! Guess what they were doing this morning? . . . That’s right . . . they were there cutting concrete and placing forms . . . again!

The plumber (a sub, of course) put the 4-inch overflow tubes (from the spa to the pool) at 36 inches above the spa floor . . . should be ok . . . right? Well it would have been if the bottom of the tube was at the 36-inch, mark not the top of the tube . . . Now when the water reaches the 32-inch mark it begins pouring out of the spa, guaranteeing the water will never reach as high as the bottom of the spa tile . . . At least not until after the general has the coping guy remove the coping, the tile guy remove the tile, the plaster guy remove the plaster and the gunite guy dig out the tube so the plumbing guy can fix the pipe, so the gunite, tile and coping guys can redo their work so the plaster guy can set it back for use . . .

The point is that in less time than it took me to write the above sentence, the general could have looked and measured the placement and forgone all the extra, profit-eating redo work.

There are several other instances where expensive changes had to be made to the pool. Almost all of which could have been avoided had the general brought a few basic tools and allocated needed time to quality control.

Contrast that with the landscape contractor, Richard Cohen Landscape & Construction, Inc., who came to the job with tape measures and survey tools and has had the same foreman on the site for the entire duration of the project. Richard himself has made daily trips to the site. So far, several situations have cropped up that needed attention, so . . . they gave it attention, breaking out the tape and tools and calling me with ‘what if’s and ‘why for’s and stopping the work to make sure all was right before moving on.

Things have not been overlooked nor forgotten and the project has moved like clockwork.

So now the national industry knows the name of a good landscape contractor, while one pool contractor not only didn’t get national publicity but is now using lunch money to repay the sub work . . .

We had egg on our face and have put in several new measures to avoid typos on the cover. You should all stop for a moment and consider your QC systems and evaluate the costs associated with redoing work . . . One $3,000 fix a month could pretty well pay for an on-site foreman or QC specialist for your company . . . and who knows . . . you may also end up with your name in the paper instead of egg on your face . . .