StreamHome Construction Podcast

Trust the Process: The Art of Client Engagement in Construction

• Alex Kosley • Episode 11

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Do You Ever Have Clients Who Think They’re Too Involved In The Process? 

Trust is the foundation of every successful construction project. In this eye-opening discussion, licensed general contractor Alex Kosley tackles the delicate subject of client involvement during builds, revealing why excessive site visits and micromanagement can derail even the most promising projects.

Drawing from years of experience, Alex shares candid insights about what he calls "the daily hard hat client" - well-meaning homeowners whose constant presence and impromptu directions create unintended consequences. "When clients are overly present, such as showing up unannounced, asking subs for changes, directly trying to manage things on site, it doesn't help. It actually hurts," Alex explains. His compelling analogy comparing micromanagement to giving pilots flying tips from the passenger seat perfectly captures why maintaining professional boundaries benefits everyone.

But this isn't about shutting clients out of the process. The episode reveals StreamHome Construction's thoughtful approach to meaningful client engagement, including strategic milestone walkthroughs, their innovative digital dashboard system, and biweekly progress meetings. These structured touchpoints maintain transparency while protecting the project's flow. Alex also introduces their "space shuttle philosophy" - the concept that comprehensive planning before breaking ground prevents costly mid-project changes and delays.

Whether you're planning your first renovation or you're a seasoned property developer, this conversation offers valuable perspective on striking the perfect balance between staying informed and allowing professionals room to excel. Ready to bring your vision to life without the stress? Connect with Stream Home Construction for a free on-site consultation at Yourstreamhome.com or call 719-644-6777 to discuss your project with experts who value both your vision and your peace of mind.

To learn more about StreamHome Construction visit:
https://www.YourStreamHome.com
StreamHome Construction
719-644-6777

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Stream Home Construction Podcast, where we take your project from conception to completion. Hosted by Licensed General Contractor Alex Kozley, we cover everything from accessory dwelling units to commercial construction in the greater Colorado Springs area. Whether you're dreaming of a new ADU, planning an office upgrade or tackling a major renovation project, we've got the expertise to guide you through it. Let's get building.

Speaker 2:

Alex Cozley shares how enthusiastic clients can unintentionally disrupt a build and how smart communication keeps everyone on the same page. Welcome back everyone. Skip Monty here, co-host slash producer, back in the studio with licensed general contractor Alex Coastley. Alex, how's it going?

Speaker 3:

Skip, I'm doing great. How are you doing yourself today?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing just fine, doing just fine. It's just Tuesday, but that's all right. I'm a fan of Tuesday, so taco Tuesday. So big question on my mind, alex, is you know, my wife tends to get involved in contractors around the house doing building the deck, working inside the house, doing whatever, and gets under their feet. And so always I wanted to ask you, you know, do you ever have clients who you think they're too involved in the process?

Speaker 3:

Well, oh yeah, the daily hard hat client yes, we've had a few and, I'll be honest, they've taught us a lot. Most importantly, just because you can show up to the job site every day doesn't mean that you should. Now don't get me wrong. We do love involved clients. In fact, our entire process is designed around thoughtful client engagement. But there's a huge difference between strategic involvement and micromanaging your general contractor. The reality is, when clients are overly present, such as showing up unannounced, asking subs for changes, directly trying to quote unquote manage things on site, it doesn't help. It actually hurts. In fact, projects almost always run better when clients give the team space to do their job. It might feel counterintuitive, but it is true.

Speaker 3:

Our most efficient, stress-free, on-time builds have come from clients who trusted the process and didn't try to fly the plane from the aisle seat, because that's what it's like. Imagine you're on a commercial flight and decide to pop into the cockpit to give the pilot a few tips. You wouldn't do that right. You'd sit back, maybe order a drink and let the professionals fly the plane. Construction's no different. When everyone stays in their lane, the result is smooth, safe and on time. We work with clients who are on site almost every day of their build. Let's just say we're creating new policies to make sure that doesn't happen again. When it happens, it's common for clients to start giving instructions to our subcontractors directly. It's one thing that we see without bringing us in the loop. Suddenly we have changes being made that haven't been approved, weren't aligned with the plans, and create extra work. This has often led to delays in the timeline and confusion among the team, kind of like hiring a chef and jumping behind the stove to season the soup for yourself. If you're going to do that, why hire a chef in the first place?

Speaker 3:

True, but to be clear, you know we do want our clients to be involved, but on purpose and by design, and you know we've structured our process to include milestone job walks where clients get to see key phases of projects as they unfold. One most important is a box walk where clients physically walk through the space and see every switch, outlet and fixture location in 3D, Because it's not always easy to see, even on 3D rendering, you know, or especially on a 2D plan, Most people's brains don't convert that into physical reality, especially on a 2D plan. Most people's brains don't convert that into physical reality. So, being able to walk through the job site and see that and have that. Active involvement is very important part of our process and it's incredibly helpful and it's how we help our clients' visions really come to life. But we also need input from clients on things like material selections and finishes. Those are decisions that will shape the final product. Again, we want the engagement to be intentional, though, and not reactive.

Speaker 3:

Something many clients don't realize is that construction involves constant problem solving. Behind the scenes. There's always little issues or site-specific quirks and real-time decisions being made, most of which never reach our clients' attention, and that's on purpose. You know our job as the general contractors is to shield our clients from that chaos. We are hired to manage moving parts so our clients don't have to. If clients see every hiccup, it's easy to start feeling anxious or overwhelmed, which can lead to unnecessary changes, which can cause delays and more costs. So again, best tip trust the process. That's what you're paying us for.

Speaker 3:

To make clients feel connected without being on site, we have some other ways to communicate and keep clients plugged in, one of which is using a BuilderTrend software. Our superintendents on site create daily logs for every person that was on the site, stating what was done. We provide plenty of photos. It's basically like a personal project dashboard for the client. They can go and see the schedule, daily logs, photos, updates. In addition to that, we host biweekly video conference or in-person owner-contractor meetings where we walk through the last two weeks of progress and then plan for the next two weeks. So we give our clients plenty of time and space to ask questions and get answers and stay plugged in with what the plan is without having to put on their hard hat.

Speaker 3:

Let's say, Using this system with BuilderTrend and updates online that clients can access. We've completed multiple projects for out-of-state clients with these systems. It works beautifully. The projects move faster and smoother when there's mutual trust. So, after working with clients who have been overly involved and seeing the unintended consequences of that, we've now started developing clear policies around job site access and communication. The intent is not to be rigid or exclusive, but to protect the integrity of your project. Boundaries make the process better for everyone, including our client ourselves and all of our subcontractors as well. So if you're a future client, you're listening, wondering how involved you should be. The answer is absolutely. You should be involved, but within a plan. So bring your ideas be part of the vision. Show up for key walkthroughs and big decision. But once you set the course, trust the pilot and let us fly the plane. Your project's gonna turn out better, faster and do fewer bumps along the way.

Speaker 2:

Very cool. Turn out better, faster, fewer bumps along the way very cool. Now I'm impressed with the, the project dashboard. What did you call that? A client portal?

Speaker 3:

yeah, client dashboard, yeah, personal project dashboard yep, we've got, yeah, photos from the job site from that day, from pretty much every trade. We see photos of electrical, if the electrician was there. We'll see plumbing photos, the plumbers there. Anything our superintendent or our team has performed We'll have photos and documentation of. They can access the schedule, they can really see the whole kind of project plan unfolding from this portal. It's a great way for them to, you know, be involved and see what's going on without having to, you know, make a phone call to interrupt kind of the workflow and that kind of thing. Of course we're always happy to take phone calls but you know, we create these systems to try to streamline the process so, you know things can run as smoothly without, you know, deviations and interruptions.

Speaker 2:

Wow, that's pretty unique. Actually, I just had a neighbor build a house recently and they definitely did not have that. I can see where that could come in handy. Also wanted to ask you know, talking about having control freaks, you know, on site, I could imagine that causes some liability safety issues, wouldn't it?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, it sure can, and that's part of the discussion internally that we're having is you know we definitely want to. You know we want everyone to be safe. It's definitely a top priority for our company, our clients as well, and you know it's it's. There's definitely some hazards and some risks that you take when you step onto a job site. So that's part of the discussion is, you know how do we control that? Because if, if there's unsafe conditions at any time and our clients feel they can just kind of come and go freely, it does create some risk and that's part of why we want to set up some boundaries and likely have a client would ideally be escorted onto the site by one of our staff members.

Speaker 2:

Gotcha and I know there's probably a lot of different ways that clients can get in the way, but are there some common disruptions that are like happen all the time?

Speaker 3:

I think it's just jumping in when something's in in progress, not yet completed, and thinking, oh, that doesn't look right, well, that's because it's not finished yet, and then trying to point out things and it's oftentimes it's just like it's frustrating the subcontractor, is frustrating our team, where we just we know what we need to do.

Speaker 3:

We don't need help from someone who doesn't really know what, what to do.

Speaker 3:

And so, yeah, a lot of times it's just seeing things that aren't complete and being concerned and trying to push it forward, when you know we do have a plan and we know that it's incomplete. You know, a lot of times we, you know, we, we, we want to be transparent with our clients about the issues on the job site. We want to be transparent with our clients about the issues on the job site, but a lot of times they're solved before we even need to bring them to their attention. And you know, to us, if we do need to bring an issue to a client's attention for a decision or something like that, we want to have solutions in place. We want to have thought through it internally and not just show up and say here's a problem from that regard. Show up and say here's a problem from that regard. So you know, again, giving some distance, keeping some distance there, allows us to, you know, bring bring issues when they arise to a client, without it being a surprise and seeming like we are not prepared for the situation.

Speaker 2:

Now I'm sure I know the answer to this question, but do you ever have clients who, whatever piece of the project you're you're focusing on at the moment, is done exactly to the specifications that was agreed upon, and they say, nah, I don't think I like that yeah we definitely have that and we're working as a company to more and more better communicate and call it the space shuttle philosophy that we.

Speaker 3:

So I heard this on a podcast with a general contractor who was talking to a woman at a bar and hotel who worked for NASA or was a private contractor related to NASA and she'd been working on a space shuttle project for 10 years. The same project and you know it kind of came out of the conversation with this general contractor gleaned from it was you know, construction companies should run more like space shuttle companies. You know they're not thinking, oh, we'll figure some of this out when we get up there and decide what we want. It's like the whole plan needs to be done before you launch a spaceship or people will die. You can't change programming mid-flight and decide what supplies you want. So you know we're really trying to move to that and really communicate that to the clients.

Speaker 3:

Like there's risk, you know, and yeah, people probably aren't going to die, you know, if we don't decide what kind of countertops or all the decisions aren't made ahead of time. But the same theory holds true, like we want to know exactly what's going to be done as soon, as far in advance as possible so that we can have a really solid plan in place and then react as those things. You know, any changes or deviations come along. But if we don't know the plan, we don't, we can't. You know, we don't know what happens here, we can't plan out the rest of it from here. So you know, really just having a clear plan in place from the beginning and not deviating from it is essential and we're doing everything we can to communicate to clients better up front what the implications are, because it almost always you know a change made mid projects going to cost money and cost time inevitably absolutely, absolutely well, alex love it.

Speaker 2:

Um, that was some very helpful information, especially for us control freaks out here who feel like we have to control everything. I think you know the end result is a is a better built, quality built house with less stress. So appreciate that that's right, absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sometimes I have to tell the clients look at these pictures, not this wall, but look at the pictures of these projects on the wall. They're beautiful, they're done. Yours is going to look like that by the time we're done here.

Speaker 2:

Don't, don't worry there you, there you go, there you go. End results, what matters. Well, alex, thanks again and we'll catch you in the next episode. Hope you have a great rest of the week.

Speaker 3:

Hey, you too. Thanks a lot, skip. See you later.

Speaker 2:

All right, man, we'll see you.

Speaker 1:

That's a wrap for this episode of the stream home construction podcast. Ready to bring your vision to life? Snag a free on-site consultation by visiting our website at wwwyourstreamhomecom, or call or text us at 719-644-6777. Until next time, let's keep building your residential and commercial dream in the greater Colorado Springs area.