Church Hires Company To Install Awnings, But The Company Doesn’t Follow The Plans The Permitting Office Approved
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Imagine working for a construction company with a really big job, but someone you work with decides to try to make the job less expensive by switching some of the supplies. Would you call him out on it and refuse to help, or would you proceed after making sure you have it in writing that he’s responsible for his decision?
In this story, one person is in this situation, and he knows it’s a bad idea to use materials that are not the same specifications as those that were approved by the permitting office.
Try telling that to the new guys who want to save some money.
It’s going to end up costing them!
Keep reading for all the details.
You don’t want to follow the Engineer’s sealed drawing? Fine me by me, please sign here!
I work for an aluminum awning company. Worked in the warehouse for 8 years and learned the machines, and then moved into sales for the past 10 and a half years.
For the longest time, all we required from our customers to quote them was the size of the canopy they needed, if it needed any minimum wind/weight loads for being close to the coast or for being inland, and whether they were going to pull a permit for the job or not.
If they needed a permit, we got an out of house engineering firm to do a stamped/sealed drawing, and then we’d adjust the material list so that our customer could build the awning according to the drawing.
New isn’t always good.
One of my long term customers recently was purchased by two brothers that wanted to try something new.
They had worked successfully in the tech sector, created some app, became wealthy, and decided to buy an aluminum awning company from the owner who was set to retire.
At first they were alright to deal with.
But really, they were a major pain.
They were awful. They had to be CCed on every email to and from their own sales force, and would call to yell at me if I didn’t CC back.
They asked the same questions 200 times for each job, and would tell me “We are you boss, we pay your bills!”
Really. Major jerks, and my company considered not selling to them due to the time and effort each individual job required to get through.
Here’s some context about the types of awnings they make.
Now, we get to where they made the mistake that cost them around $100k.
This awning company did not do residential work at all, but instead did larger commercial jobs.
Think of the overhead awnings you’ll see over FedEx or UPS bay doors, or commercial buildings with window awnings/break area awnings. Covered walkways at schools and churches.
This sounds like a really big job.
One of these churches contacted the Brothers for a series of walkways that were going to be nearly 2000 lineal feet. Massive job.
These were going over sidewalks, between buildings, creating a new drop off area for the school portion, and smaller awnings for where teachers/parents would sit at the play ground.
The church wanted it done above board, and told my customer “We need a permit for all of this.”
So that’s what they did. They gave me the information, I got the engineer, they worked out the details, got a price, paid it, and within 3 weeks, we had a set of drawings.
Uh-oh.
These drawings included 6″ x 6″ extruded aluminum posts, as the awnings were going to be 14+ feet in the air at somepoints. These are $700+ posts depending on color and paint.
My customer did not like that.
Brother P “Mysterious. Hey. About that church job. I need you to switch all the 6″ x 6″ posts to 4″ x 4″. We’re going to save the church some money, and we have an engineer that vouches for the 4″ posts.”
Me “Do you have a stamp or seal for this engineer? I need to quote it according to the drawing, but if you have another one where it was chan…”
Brother P “Just switch it over, Mysterious. We’ll handle it.”
OP’s boss knew this could be a problem.
Cue malicious compliance.
They had been annoying and hounding me for this job and many others.
So I switched 56 – 24′ 6×6 posts to 4×4. I sent the quote back with the extra line on it stating “Material Changed from Engineer’s Drawing per Customer Request.” Printed out the email, and took it to my boss to check off.
She asked me the usual questions, and informed me that if we sent this job out, we would not accept any returns since it was a customer’s request to change from sealed drawings.
I let my customer know all this, they approved, and two weeks later the material shipped.
Someone who goes to the church thought something seemed off about the construction.
Now, little did my customer know, but the head of that counties permitting office was a member of that church. Saw the construction going on over the weekend, and when he finally went back to his office, asked around for the permit for his address.
He found it, with the attached drawings used to get the permit, and took all of that to jobsite.
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From my understanding, this man went out and measured every single post, spacing, and found that my customer wasn’t doing anything to the engineers drawing.
The last I heard, he made them take everything down, refill the holes for the posts they drilled in the wrong places, and basically made them start over!
Here’s how it ended for OP.
I have never smiled as hard as I did when Brother P called me, asking to return the posts and switch out for the 6×6.
Unfortunately for him, we don’t take back material that’s been cut/installed/or has screw holes, and that he signed the quote stating the changes per his request.
It took them another month to finish the job, and I only wish I knew if they broke even or not.
Wow. It’s not like the church wanted to cheap it up. The brothers probably weren’t going to give the church a discount for switching to cheaper supplies. They were probably trying to pocket some extra money by being cheap.
I’m glad someone who works in the permitting office happens to go to that church.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
I completely agree with this comment.
This person shares a theory about how they were planning to get the money back that they lost on this job.
This person loved the ending.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about customer who won’t take no for an answer when it comes to outdated price-matching policies.
Another person points out that safety should be a priority.
I’m pretty sure that the thicker beams would make the structure much safer. I’m glad they were forced to change the beams to the correct size. Not only would it be unfair to the church to basically rip them off, but safety really should be the top priority.
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