Sometimes Things Just Don’t Go Right

When one really thinks about it – given the literal thousands of hands the components which become a completed pole building have to go through, it is a miracle anything ever gets done!

With all of the pieces and parts and all of the human potentiality factor added in, even those who ascribe to Rush Limbaugh’s 99+% accuracy rate as being attainable would have dozens of things wrong, shorted, damaged or otherwise!

In one of my “past lives” as a builder, we did exit surveys of all of our completed buildings at three, six and nine months after completion to make certain the clients were absolutely satisfied and to determine if there was anything on the building which should be fixed under warranty.

The BIAW (Building Industry Association of Washington) held a course on writing contracts back in the 1990’s. Although it was designed for the remodel industry, I felt it was applicable enough to attend. When the attorney running the class told us anyone with a customer satisfaction rating of over 50% was doing good – I was appalled, we had an approval rating in the mid-90% range and I thought we were not as good as we should have been.

When I was building, I thought I had some very good crews – but even the best of them seemed to have a building every year or so where everything (or seemingly so) went wrong. When quizzed about what happened to create the building construction errors, the universal answer was…..they had no idea, it just did!

(Let this be a cautionary message to those considering hiring a builder who has a perfect track record).

One of the things we have developed at Hansen Pole Buildings is a steel trim profile which absolutely, perfectly fits with the sliding door track and brackets we provide. As we purchase from the six largest independent steel roofing and siding roll forming chains in the country, all of them have the diagram for this part.

Specialty steel trims are produced on a machine known as a press break – it allows for flat steel sheets to be bent to precise angles and dimensions repeatedly.

Well, one of our steel vendors (who does a fabulous job at getting the right pieces, in the right quantity to hundreds of our clients annually) had one of those “no idea” moments recently and we ended up with a couple of good-natured clients who just could not get the track covers they were sent to fit….because they were bent to the wrong profiles!

Not to fret, as highlight moments in building construction are those which come not from doing it perfectly the first time, but by expediently and gracefully taking care of the oopses!

The steel vendor correctly reproduced the needed parts – and got them shipped out to the now happy clients.