Express Construction Management Inc

In response to this claim and disputed amount: Due to the client’s ongoing financial constraints Express was employed intermittently throughout the project; whereas the bulk of the home construction was overseen by the owner without a construction management firm employed in any capacity. During...

these times of self-management, the client changed Architects 3 times and changed the home plan more than 5 times. As is documented by the numerous revised plans with major changes that had to go back to the city for approval. The client made changes “on the fly” without consulting architects, a project manager, engineers, or the city. [redacted], the home warranty provider urged the owner’s to retain professional project management services throughout the construction of their home and they declined due to budgetary constraints. The owner’s self-managed the house design, the framing of their home, window/door installs, roofing installation, deck coating installation, electrical rough-in, plumbing rough-in, heating rough-in and virtually all other major components of this project. The owner has zero prior construction experience and chose to self -manage the construction of their million dollar home. Express was employed by this client for the months of November 2015, January 2016, and October 2016. Both before and after these months the construction activities noted above were performed by the owner. In October 2016 Express was hired to fix problems caused by the owners lack of construction knowledge. They had backfilled the basement with loose organic fill material and had missed the installation of key footing pads. Express overseen the trades removal of this loose fill material, and the installation of the missing footing pads. The backfill was completed in lifts, compacted, tested, and passed by a geotechnical engineer to ensure that there would be no issues down the road with settling. At this point (October 10, 2016) the owner once again chose to self-manage the site. After October 10, 2016 the owner hired the contractor who did the footing installation directly to perform the installation of the basement slab. March 2017 we get correspondence from the owner that there is a problem with door/window heights in relationship to the slab. Despite the fact that Express was not in the employment of the owner when the house was framed, the drawing were changed, the windows/doors were installed, and the slab prep was completed/poured. We came to site to see if we could help regardless. The measurement from the slider door buck to the concrete slab met code requirements and the stair rise worked out to 7-1/4” which was not a problem either. The client said that there was a problem with the window heights in the basement and that they were too high due to the slab height. My documented response to the client is that Express Construction Management was not employed by the owner of this home for the 6 months prior to March 2017, and when we were asked to leave site in October due to budgetary constraints the basement slab had not been installed. This is documented by the attached site report, invoices for work performed, and documented email correspondence. All of which is attached to this response. To detail out some of these items and respond to the claim of monies owing I have attached a site report showing that when we left site on October 12, 2016 the slab was not complete. I have attached the invoices showing our period of employment on this project proving we were not employed when the basement slab was poured. These invoices also show that the amount claimed is also greatly inflated. Our project management fee for the month of September for this project totalled $4,440.00+ GST of which $440.00 was for a carpenter to adjust tele-posts in the basement. The attached email correspondence shows Express informing the client in advance that as of October 12, 2016 we are off-site. To address the claims of sub-trades providing the client with cheaper quotes: If the client directly approached sub-trades with cash deals (no receipt) and they agreed to work for less due to the tax benefit of this. It is entirely possible that the client saved at least the taxes on the sub-contractor’s quotations. For accounting and tax purposes we charge GST and our trades charge us GST on any of their invoices. As a contractor, we do charge a mark-up on any sub-contractor invoices that run through our company. This is industry standard and our rates vary from 4%-15% depending on the job. So in conclusion the owner could have saved roughly 10% on sub-trades by paying them cash without a receipt and not having the invoice on the books running through Express. The proven facts are that the owner’s self-managed their million-dollar project due to budgetary constraints during all major aspects of this build including the framing, window/door install, rough-ins, and the basement slab installation. Therefore, Express Construction Management has no knowledge of what took place between October 2016 and March 2017 when the basement slab was poured. Then we received a complaint for work that we did not perform or project manage. During this build the owners went through 3 Architects which likely caused some inconsistencies. In conclusion, Express Construction Management always has and always will conduct ourselves in a professional manner. We document our projects well and our site managers have no less than 15 years experience managing multi-million dollar projects. We have a good reputation with consultants, trades, suppliers, and clients and our aim is to protect that good reputation. When a complaint arose 6 months after we had been on site. For work we did not even perform we still visited the site to see if we could help. However, we were not dealt with in a very polite manner when we explained that we were not responsible for what happened after the owner chose to self-manage the site. So after being threatened we referred the matter to our legal council. We have documentation to back up our statements and its quite straight forward. We were not employed to oversee this project in any manner when the basement slab was poured. We do not owe any monies to this client, nor are we liable for any of these false claims. We recognize that in some cases, such as this one, a customer may be angry and simply looking for somewhere to place blame. I hope this helps clear up the issue.   We stand behind our work and our ability as a project managers. We have many fantastic references who will attest to this as well.   Regards,   Morgan R[redacted] - President Express Construction Management Inc.