Contractors Can Browbeat Owners

Most contractors are not brow beaters, but occasionally a bully appears. No matter how old you are, dealing with a bully is not fun. Since you may eventually have to deal with one, let’s take a look at why and how this happens.

The main reasons contractors will browbeat owners is to:

• Get money sooner than agreed upon, which can leave the owner in a financially weak position with greater exposure to change orders as discussed in Construction – Project Changes.
• Make more money than originally agreed, by increasing project costs.
• Increase their profit margin, by doing less or providing lower quality work than agreed.

Contractors browbeat by trying to convince you of often exaggerated difficulties. Contractors may want to gain concessions or force you into accepting unapproved material, construction changes, or additional work in order to increase the scope and the project cost, because increasing project costs increases the contractor’s fee.

Contractors typically browbeat owners by using one, or a combination, of the following methods:

• Avoiding direct responses and providing vague or confusing explanations

This tactic is used to confuse you. Contractors know that in the absence of a trusted information source, the more confused you are the more you are going to have to trust what they are saying. The Solution: Ask follow up questions that explore what the contractor is telling you and make notes of the discussion. Tell the contractor that you will need some time to consider and decide. Never let them know that you have no clue what they are talking about.

• Asserting their years of expertise and list of accomplishments

This is the contractor’s way of telling you, they know more than you. The more the you think this is true, the more you’ll trust what the contractor is saying. The Solution: Ask them if it is possible there could be something unusual that wasn’t previously considered.

• Announcing that an immediate response to a question is required to avoid project delays or some other catastrophe

This is a way of scaring you with tales of doom. The less you know, the more they’ll scare you in to trusting what they say. The Solution: Find out the severity of the situation. Is there a leak, foundation crack, fire, or some other property or life-threatening situation? Only property and life-threatening situations truly require immediate response, everything else is information they could have provided to you sooner. Tell the contractor you need time to consider what they are saying so you can make an informed decision.

• Revealing how little money they are making

Crying poor is a way of pulling on your heartstrings. This generally happens after the contractor has built a personal rapport with you. The more you believe there is a friendship, the more you’ll tend to trust what the contractor is saying. The Solution: Keep a healthy emotional distance and remember to take the emotion out of the situation. Re-read the section titled Overview – To Use a General Contractor or not to understand how they make money, gain knowledge and make an informed decision.

• Get loud and/or exhibit varying degrees of anger

Contractors generally start getting loud and angry when none of the previous tactics work. This generally works by scaring people on a deeper more emotional level, where the contractor literally intimidates the owner into trusting what the contractor is saying. The Solution: Distance yourself from the face-to–face meetings in order to distance yourself emotionally, get tough and deal with the contractor primarily in writing.

• Threaten you with a Property Lien

Contractors generally threaten lien as a last resort. They do this when everything else has failed. The Solution: Read Construction – Don’t panic if the contractor tells you they are going to lean the property, and call a Construction Coach because you are going to need special help.

The ultimate solution to all six browbeating tactics is to gain knowledge from independent, objective sources, and make an informed decision.

Knowledge is power, you want to be as knowledgeable as possible or have a resource for advice, so you will know when someone is trying to take you for a ride. Never be afraid to ask other professionals what they think, especially if they have no vested or financial interest in the outcome.

Project size doesn’t matter. You can always find yourself dealing with a hard-nosed contractor.

I remember when I was the owner representative on a large multi-million dollar project for a large notable non-profit organization, and the winning bidder was one of the largest local general contractors. The owner had severe parking limitations due to other surrounding large construction projects. Due to the limited space, the owner permitted the contractor to have only four vehicles on site, at any one time next to their staging area (where materials are stored for construction).

This meant everyone else would have to park across the street, in the parking garage, and walk over. Right from the start the contractor took more space than allotted in the owner’s lot, creating difficulties for the owner and their customers.

The project just started, and I already found myself trying to enforce the simple parking regulations outlined in the contract documents.

Working with the GC’s project executive (we’ll call him John), was easy at first, as he said the limited parking was not a problem, that he understood the need for the rule and that they would comply. It became clear quickly that John gave lip service to the rule, when he continued to break it. After several conversations, John became argumentative. I remember clearly thinking, “I have talked with this guy three times in three days about this same uncomplicated issue. If this is how he acts about this now, he’s going to be impossible when we have a real problem?” Almost coordinated with my thought, John all of a sudden became extremely belligerent.

Knowing that this was only a prelude to future dealings with John, I knew I had to take drastic action to get him to change his behavior or suffer through the project with a contractor who would steam roll me at every opportunity. I had to show him who was boss (so to speak), but I didn’t want to get into an endless and unwinnable screaming match. It took a fraction of a second to decide enough was enough and just as he reached mid-sentence, click, I hung up the phone without saying a word.

He must have thought it was a technical problem because he called right back. Right after I answered, he started in on me again. I didn’t say a word and mid-sentence, I hung up on him again. This time I figured he would know I hung up on him, and if he didn’t I would just keep hanging up mid-sentence until he got the message to stop being belligerent.

Almost immediately, the phone rang again. It was John calling back again. I could tell he was fuming, but he collected himself and asked, “Did you hang up the phone?”

Without skipping a beat I said, “Yes John…, I did.”

“Is that the kind of conversation we are going to have?” He asked me forcefully.

“That depends of you, John.” I replied equally.

“What do you mean?” He asked.

“Listen… Frankly you offend me, and I’m not going to tolerate anyone talking to me that way.” I went on. “If you think you are going to talk to me like that, we are going to have a problem. Now, if you want to take a minute and have a civil conversation I’ll do that, otherwise write me a letter.” I was ready to hang up… For a second, there was silence…

“Okay, look, I’m sorry… I would like to talk to you.” John said. Then went on to explain who was parking in the spaces, when, for how long, and for what purposes. “At any given time I need to accommodate suppliers, consultants, vendors, and executives who visit the site daily. I need at least one more space for them to park.”

“Look,” I said, “the owner just doesn’t have any more space in the parking lot they can give up, but I’ll see what we can do.” I went on to explain that the owner too struggled with limitations imposed by outside factors, but had to find ways to make the situation work and assured him that I would discuss a solution with the owner.

Understanding the contractor’s need gave me the information I needed to find the win-win solution. I knew that a good amount of space on site was for staging materials, most materials are in easily movable packages and only needed 100 square feet of space. Armed with information, I recommended the owner allow the contractor to store enough materials in the empty space in the building for the contractor to create one additional parking space on site.

John got the additional space he needed, the owner easily maintained the same number of required parking spaces, and I set a communication standard creating a mutually respectful working relationship that aided in resolving disagreements that followed.

TIP: Never let a contractor browbeat you!