Inspections, Redux

One of the biggest issues in any construction project is that you have to do something and then call the County to get it inspected.  Piss off the inspector and your life is miserable.  Appointments aren’t kept and projects that ought to pass are failed.  You want to group all the inspections together so you inconvenience the inspector the least (“inconvenience” being “making him show up to do his job”.)

So we needed HVAC to be approved so the drywall guys can come in and work toward closing things back up to actually keep the conditioned air inside the building rather than outside.  The carpenters and plumbers sent word that they would be ready for inspection on Friday.  I started calling the HVAC guy (the boss, not Igor) and couldn’t get him on the phone to coordinate his inspection.

For two days.  I called his cell and the office, both.

When I finally heard from him, I got some BS story about his cell phone dying.

Here’s a hint – when a piece of equipment is how you make your living, if it dies you GET ANOTHER ONE IMMEDIATELY.  If it’s being repaired, you have an old cell activated so you aren’t out of touch with your customers, who get increasingly ticked that you aren’t returning the calls that you don’t know about.

And if the person who answers the phone at the office isn’t passing messages on, you need to have a “come to Jesus” meeting with them.

Eventually we made contact and the HVAC inspection was scheduled.

Except that the other trades had changed their timing, but nobody told me.  So we had an inspector coming out to check just one thing, and then he’d have to come back again on Monday or Tuesday to do the others – just the thing that will annoy them and result in delays in the future.

So when the electricians called in a panic – they weren’t involved in the mix – it wasn’t good.

We got an inspection and HVAC passed.  And everyone else knows that it can’t happen again.