They don't really expect more for less. It's just the way the game is played for many of them. You can bet that few if any of them just start throwing in extra services for their clients at no charge once on site and working.
The way the game works for the builder/contractor:
1. Get cost quote for the absolute minimum staking that they will be able to use to get their job done. Negotiate this with the survey PM or business owner.
2. Once the crew shows up, ask for more than you negotiated for. The less business saavy the chief, the more you ask for. If the chief is hesitant, start whining about how the proposed staking won't work with the site conditions, you won't be able to get your job done right, possibility of delays, blah, blah, blah.
3. If chief is still reluctant, threaten a backcharge to the survey company for construction delays, downtime, etc.
4. If you succeed in bullying the chief into providing different and extra work, quickly and confidently tell him exactly what he needs to do for you and then leave immediately before the chief thinks of having you sign a change order or telling you that he will have to call in and clear it with the boss. Hopefully, once this conversation has taken place without the chief asserting himself, he will then be too timid to come back to you to reopen the subject and tell you that he needs to clear the office. You make it easier for him, at the moment, to appease you and deal with the boss later.
5. If the chief does say something about calling the boss, you turn up the heat, lose your cool, yell, scream, threaten backcharges and personal responsibility on the chief. Pull out the stops.
6. The cowed chief gives in rather than incurring further wrath of this unreasonable construction guy. After all, he doesn't want to be responsible for a backcharge that he will need to explain to his boss. Beside that, the contractor might just start throwing punches next. how will the chief explain getting into a fist fight with the client (or getting his butt kicked).
7. Contractor won this round and now holds the upper hand in the next round.
8. Survey PM calls contractor and notifies him of extra charges, and here you are making a post on this forum.
9. Bill him anyway. Tell him you don't really give a durn whether he signed anything or not, he was well ware of the scope of services, he wouldn't expect to give his client extra services without compensation and he has no right to expect that you would. He asked for the extra effort, he can expect to be billed for it.
10. Rip your chief up if you haven't already so that he remembers the lesson, and make sure that he carries a copy of the scope of service on each project you send him out on and a stack of Extra Services Authorization forms in his truck, and ensure that he knows how to use them.
2A. If the chief has been through this before, and especially if the business has been through this several times before, right at step 2 of the game, the chief pulls out a field change order slip from the stack of several he has in his truck and says "Tell me exactly what you want. We'll get right on it as soon as you sign the change order."
3A. Some contractors will be persistent and jump right to step 5.
4A. Some chiefs will let this go right back to step 6. If the both the chief and the contractor has played the game enough times, the contractor will recognize pretty quick that he's lost this round and will decide on a very limited amount of extra work that will cost him no more than an hour or two of crew time and move on.
A good company policy about handling change in services requested in the field and good experienced chief and at this point is worth a lot to you in the headaches you will avoid and in the fees for extra effort you will be able to have a solid basis on which to collect.
It's a game the contractors invented and made the rules for. If they win, you lose. If you don't lose, they don't really lose either, because they just pay for what they get and come out even. If you don't lose, it's a win if you get paid for extra services you provide, or it's a draw if the contractor just decides to live with what's already in the scope of services. Learn how it's played, teach your field crews how it's played, and you avoid losing.
The only exception I might make is for a regular client who pays on time and doesn't have a history of trying to force you into low ball fees or trying to get something for nothing. On most construction jobs there is a little bit of horsetrading that goes on in the field. The contractor knocks down a dirt pile or moves materials to make your job easier, and in turn, you provide an extra stake here and there. That's little stuff that helps the job run smoother and evens out in the end. But if they push, push back so they know you are not going to work hard going broke for their benefit.
I think that is a good way of imparting the lesson that it is important to capture these casts in a way that the crews will remember, whether or not you would actually follow through on firing the next person missing the point.
Anyone who would not work for you because they think you're a jerk for making the point so sharply doesn't deserve to work for a stable company. Apparently, they think that it is just fine for them to make a stupid mistake which takes several hundered dollars out of your paycheck. But I'm sure that if he were the one making the mistake, he would be completely outraged if you, as the boss said that he would have to share in the pain by not getting paid for the time spent doing the extra work.
Even as an employee back in my teens, I had a basic understanding of why I was employed. As I worked for my employer, i knew that some portion of what he billed out my effort at covered my wages, part covered my benefits, part covered other expenses of running the business, and part was for profit for the company/boss. I didn't know back then how much went to each category, but figured that my share was probably bigger than the share designated for profit, so figured that was fair as long as I got more for my effort thean the boss did. But since he owns the comapny and gave me the job, he deserves something from my effort.
But I also understood that if I made a mistake which cost my employer X number of hours of my effort, that it was costing him all of the amount of my hourly rate. If the built in profit margin was 1/4 X, then I figured that I had to work at least 4 hours of profitable time just for the boss to break even on having me as an employee for every hour spent on either fixing a screwup or on unrecoverable hours spent doing extra service.
Some seem to think that their bosses are sitting on a bottomless pile of money and that their companies exist to fulfill an obligation to provide jobs.
Yeah, mistakes happen, and we all make them from time to time. When they do, those who buck up, take the consequences and learn from them will be far more valuable than those who think that those who would mete out the consequences are jerks. To those that self centered, I'd wish them luck at their next job.
You been had. He knew.
dealing with Contractors
one time several years ago we were out doing an ALTA on an warehouse when it wasn't quite done (I was working for another Surveyor, just doing what I was told to do). There was a water crew out there doing something. I said to the rodman, just wait sooner or later that foreman will come over and ask for some stakes (we had nothing to do with staking). I was right. 🙂 I told the guy, sorry I have nothing to do with construction staking.
I screwed up pretty badly a couple of times in my first job. My boss didn't make me pay for it. I guess he viewed it as a learning experience especially since I felt so badly about it. They were honest mistakes.
When he hired me he told me he would keep me on if I made him money. That was kind of an eye opener for a kid.
dealing with Contractors
You should of whipped out a request for staking form, helped him fill it out and sign it and made some money....
lol!
