It took a couple years. Bank loans and engineered drawings, I helped frame a house (shown prior), cleaned some toilets (not shown) and closed multiple deals with unrelated clients. Richard kept saying that he had something for me, that he needed someone with communication skills. Finally I figured out what he had in mind. We agreed to a back loaded deal and I started February 15.
My first day I called about 50 people while keeping records in a dropbox app called Paper. Pretty fancy, its like a html page that I can edit from anywhere. Made a section for water and gas, another for paving, concrete, sub grade...it filled to multiple pages pretty quickly. I could copy and paste to email easily and thunderbird mail made all dropbox links hot. Knowing that Richard needed to keep me replaceable, I made it easy for him to consider by sending constant updates, writing down all my passwords, and similarly, being able to walk away. Its a double edged sword, but walk away power is a huge part of any relationship.
Richard finished architecture school in the late 60's. Once cleaning out a storage room we found drawings--actual drawings--of a church he built years ago. Dude is an artist first, math was that core requirement that often keep his type from finishing the program. He does have a smart phone, but even after three months of hyperlinks, I think he still doesn't really understand the cloud. Its weird to him that I keep everything on my phone; there are supposed to be thousands of printed pages. He doesn't understand how I keep what should be acres of material in such a little box.
Lucas at Pace Supply called to find the buzz. I told him the only thing locked up was the building and pad and all other contracts were open. Being new to the area, I don't really know the different contractors, but I do know a fair bit about contract law. I adopted a vibe of not really knowing anything, and immediately proved to be a huge asset. By confessing ignorance of their industry, I could determine who would be a coach. Lucas was a coach.
Contractors (that were going to buy parts from him) started to call. I had been leaving messages with secretaries and emailing plan sets. There had been a couple wild fires last fall and homeowners ready to rebuild immediately all needed to get contractors lined up at the same time as me. To even get a concrete guy to bid was nearly impossible. Granted, I was looking for curbs and gutters for September and these guys were bidding foundations for March.
The first two weeks were pretty touchy. To everyone else in the office it seemed like I was just playing on my phone. Which was kinda true. I used a scanner app to file everything directly into a bank folder and nothing took more than a couple minutes. I had also downloaded a game called simcity and was logging multiple hours while corporate owners were deciding whether to bid. With a plan set 10x any normal house, the ones that like doing big jobs quickly separated from the small town players. Slowly, offers started to trickle in.
One of the first was a plumbing bid from Patrick. He's a younger guy, has a son in the third grade, and I genuinely liked him. We were still trying to get the water board to approve a 12" feed heading north, and for that he called a guy named Ernie. Patrick came in with a hand drawn sketch that turned out to contain Ernie's notes. I hadn't met Ernie but I had spoke to him on the phone. He said he was too busy to do our utilities, something about a sewer treatment plant, and I worried that we'd be unable to find anyone else. To know Patrick had support from the real pro was encouraging, except I actually wanted the real pro.
Helping the younger generation gain a foothold into the big leagues is a huge part of community development. The easiest thing in general contracting is to hire the same group every time and just bill the client whatever they charge. It helps get free tickets to sporting events, but doesn't do much for the budget and we knew we were going to be over budget before we ever began.
The loan was negotiated in 2016 but construction didn't happen right away. By the time the first GC got all his boys to bid and a package presented, they were 1.3M over Richard's original estimate. I guess that was probably when Richard told Miguel that he could do it in house and make it work. Miguel agreed, and that was probably when Richard started telling me that he had something in mind.
We had been his photographers for a couple years, he had seen how we dealt with his clients and generally knew our methods. He had let us put our computer in his office and so we'd worked together too. Most importantly, at 9:30 am sharp (he's Swiss after all) the whole group has coffee together. Over the years we have turned dialogue to economics. We had bought Richard a copy of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, after that our bitcoin and Austrian theories had some ring. Since the others in the office are still largely pro state, they usually leave early and so now its just the three of us. Been true for months kinda.
The day steel tariffs were first announced, Patrick joined us. I mentioned that some company in Indiana has announced that they were reopening a plant and that 500 jobs were available. We talked about tariffs (me pro) and Cheryl the anarchist against, and I remember watching Patrick's reaction. I knew he had no idea about any of it, but he was trying to maintain his status as the guy who could pull off $375K worth of plumbing in a tight time frame and tried to hide his cognitive dissonance. Its funny watching most white guys deal with a situation when they're not in charge, its like they have to recall some prior status of a student or employee or some subservient role. For the ones who are really hungry for power, they are seemingly the least able. Patrick didn't have a clue, and didn't really remember how to cover.
Lucas had sent our plan set to a guy named Steve. Only Patrick had bid the utility connections, until Steve. With a guy named Tyler, Steve and I sat down together in the conference room. Steve didn't have fancy clothes on, he looked to have been through a ringer and surfacing for another lash. Tyler was way too young. Richard popped in for a minute, shook some hands and went upstairs.
It was in that meeting that everything changed. Steve explained to me how he thought utilities should work, Tyler asked questions about engineering. They mentioned things that no one had mentioned, they asked me questions that no one had asked. When I said that laco had done the drainage plan, they shot each other a look and neither said a word.
Richard and I talked about these bids for hours, and after a second meeting, he let me hire Steve.
The night Steve and I struck a verbal deal done on the phone, I called Patrick and said we were going with someone else. The community was shocked. Shocked! Ernie was the plumber and Patch the heir apparent. No one knew this guy Steve, his cel phone is from Bakersfield, and two days later I got a pretty hot call from Patrick. He told me how I had caught him off guard and he needed me to explain that he got undercut by more than 10% which I said was our cut-off. I even got a call from Ernie. Apparently Ernie had helped him put together the entire bid and said there was no way that anyone could do it cheaper and thus this other guy clearly doesn't have a clue what he's doing.
Tyler bid the over excavation and beat Ken's bid. Cheryl and I built a tiny house in Louisiana with a friend named Ammon, and Tyler looks just like Ammon. Its uncanny really, and based on that alone I really knew we needed to bring him in. Ken had presented some proposal that wasn't remotely like a contract, it had multiple typos and surprisingly poor layout. Tyler's was an actual contract offer, appeared sufficiently professional, and included some disaster mitigation estimates. Ken's made no mention of any contingency.
Ken realized we had a second bid for the dig probably after a meeting with a guy named Ryan. More on that later, but word got out that we were exploring all options. First Patrick, now Ken? The world was convinced it was going to be a goat rodeo.
I certainly have a rather unconventional style. I wear skate shoes and t-shirts then remember the first name of the receptionist. No one here really knows where I've been, but they all know I'm not from here. On the east coast I learned to be efficient, honest, and direct. I learned that there is no value in 300 word emails when 10 words will do. And to send it as soon as actually possible. Here some differ in a whole manner of ways. Normally they would collectively squelch something as foreign as me, but in this situation, I happen to have keys to a really big check book.
Ken finally returned one of my calls (he had previously only ever called Richard) and agreed to a meeting. We talked about a possible situation where after he digs out the 18" as required, that the bottom of the dirt wouldn't compact and we would need either fabric or rock, or both. He told me in that meeting that if we needed fabric and if we paid for it, he would do it for free.
After that meeting I agreed with Richard to work with Ken. I had looked at the soil profiles of the engineering core samples and knew we had a peat bog with standing water 100 feet (30m) away. The flood plane for the site is at 608' and we were digging to 607.5' then filling back up to 610'. I knew water was going to be an issue for ground break, and I really wanted a solid contingency plan.
The first day Ken brought a little excavator and said it was too wet to dig. Confessing no knowledge of his industry, I accepted his testimony and broadcast the message. Apparently dirt was coming from a sewer treatment plant build and was going to be coordinated by a company named Ghilotti. Steve was my contact, he said they were having the same problem at their site.
What could have been a week off became all about HVAC, apparently Title 24 has to do with emissions and any changes to electrical consumption require their approval. We had a couple bids: one cadillac, one pretty similar, and a third that really rethought the whole concept.
May 15 Ken called it ready. Three months exactly, construction was ready to start.
photo @sloe
all images ©ramsayphotography2018