We’re considering offering some additional services to our clients, such as organising estimates for certain products and services. We have always shied away from getting too involved with other companies because, and I appreciate this may sound a little old-fashioned, we want to maintain our independence. We want to make sure that clients can trust our advice and that we can be trusted to be completely impartial when it comes to builders and product suppliers etc. As soon as companies know you are in a position to get their company name in front of clients, you get inundated with offers and ‘special deals’.
However, we’ve decided that there are some services that would be very useful to our clients, such as Quantity Surveying services so that the build costs of a scheme can be ascertained at a very early stage in a project. Okay, that’s clearly harmless but where we might have to be more careful is obtaining kitchen or floor tiling quotations for instance. We have decided to give this a try and see if many clients take these options up. I would be pleased to receive some feedback on this and find out what clients would find most useful.
We will be happy to put companies in touch with suppliers as long as suppliers treat our clients with respect, provide a good service and at least occasionally win some orders. We currently do this with building companies and unlike some architectural practices, we ask and expect nothing for putting builders on our list of satisfactory builders (as we call them). I am aware that some practices like us actually expect to be paid to add them to their list. We don’t. Companies are there on merit, if we get bad feedback and we think it’s justified we quietly drop them. Of course, this means we are often looking for new builders to add, so if you are a good building company with a good track record and can provide references with examples of satisfactory work, please get in touch.
Written by Tony Keller – Building Tectonics Ltd.