A New Story.
How a free lunch can take care of your property management headaches.
It was a hot Monday afternoon in July and the humidity made it feel like an Indian sweat lodge...
The Case of the Missing Unspecified Specifications!
By Steve Hoogenakker
It was a hot Monday afternoon in July and the humidity made it feel like an Indian sweat lodge. The air conditioner was refusing to work through another day, much like the temp that was hired here last week. My desk, looking like it belonged to Andy Rooney was strewn with paperwork facing every direction.
Emails had come in over the weekend about sprinkler heads shooting fountains 15 feet in the air, and I’d received 2 calls from the Vice President of the board asking when the pruning was going to be done. I even got an email asking about the sidewalk edging. Sidewalk edging? Who asks about sidewalk edging?
I scrambled through the papers looking for the maintenance specs, then through my files. I called my assistant and asked her for the contract, but nobody had found it yet.
The contractor finally called me back at 3:00 PM. He didn’t think the pruning had been due yet.The edging might have been kind of done using a weed whip, he didn’t know. As for the sprinklers, how was he supposed to know? He said “I’ll get my irrigation subcontractor out there in the next week”. A week? Oh no.
At 5:45 PM, I left the office, never finding the specifications. I emailed the Vice President before I left and told her I was working on it, but didn’t feel like I had made a lot of headway.
Tuesday morning. Another email about wasting precious water due to the fountain sprinkler heads asking if I cared about the environment and if I was going to pay the water bill next month. I get a phone message from an angry resident about one of their bird baths being damaged by the mowers last week. With the edging and pruning questions still fresh on my mind, we did a full press search for the specifications. Voila, my assistant has saved us!
Well, saved might be a strong word. I start to read through it. Hmmm, I’ve never seen specs like these before, they’re only a couple of pages long, should be a piece of cake.
Let’s see here, mowing; “Contractor not responsible for damage to personal items left in common areas”. I don’t remember seeing that. I hope the birdbath was inside the sidewalk, but it’s not likely. I’m not looking forward to that visit and phone call. Ah, here’s edging. “Edging shall be completed once annually”. Well, no end date, so I guess they have until Halloween to finish. I’m sure they won’t wait that long, but when?
Then I found pruning. Pruning shall be completed twice annually, but after shrubs have flowered. What does that mean I wondered? Surely some shrubs have finished flowering, it’s July for Pete’s sake. Have they done any of it? OK, one more question, irrigation, let’s see if that’s any better. Irrigation: “Lawn Sprinklers will be started up in the spring and blown out in the fall. If adjustments or repairs are necessary, it is the responsibility of client to notify contractor.”
So, I feel good that I found the contract and specs, but I still don’t have a single answer to give to the association.
This story happens hundreds if not thousands of times in Minnesota each year in one form or another. The problem arises because there is no standardized specifications for grounds maintenance. The specs could’ve come from a book, or more likely, they’re using a contractors specifications. I’ve run the largest landscape maintenance business here through the 1990’s and I can tell you that 20% of the language in contracts being passed around is language I wrote in 1999, and I am not an attorney!
In the past the board probably took 3 bids with 3 sets of specifications and accepted one. If they were one of the lucky ones, they kept using the same specs even after the contract ran out. If not, when the bid was up again, they asked for 3 more bids and got 3 different sets of specs to try to compare and had a new board to re-learn everything all over again....
Part II tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment