7/28/15 - Final Walkthrough

Today we met our PM Mark out at the house to do our final walk-through.  We had gone over the high points with him a few days ago, but when we were there then, the house wasn't quite finished and hadn't been cleaned yet.  Today was the first time we've seen it all cleaned up and I have to say, it's beautiful!!!!   

During this meeting Mark went over the massive amount of information they give you for your new house.  There is a big binder that has the entirety of the information for the house that is there for us, but he had a check-list of things to cover as well.  He explained the applicable warranties for the different parts of the house, the roof, drywall, appliances, flooring, etc.  He went over Ryan's recommendations for cleaning and caring for the different finishes in the house as well as the contact information for the Ryan helpline and the other subcontractors related to building the house.  He explained how they handled the 30-day meeting and then the 10-month follow up and what we could expect with those, and he even gave us some recommendations of his own for a few things as well.

Once we went over everything paperwork wise and talked about the survey (more on that in a bit) we did our actual walkthrough.  As I said before this is the first time that we've been in the house that it has been all cleaned up and completely finished and man what a difference a few days makes.   Everything was postcard perfect.  To say that we are beyond pleased with the outcome would be the biggest understatement.  I've followed a lot of blogs and done a lot of reading about the entire process of building a home and more specifically building a home with Ryan and I've seen varying degrees of issues that people have had at their final walkthroughs and I am pleased to say that we truly had none.  

Now to be fair, we did have an earlier walkthrough a few days prior to go over any issues that we had, but other than wanting the chain on our stairwell light fixture shortened, we didn't have any issues then either.  I believe this is completely due to the the diligence and over-sight from our PM Mark.  I've said in a few other posts that I get the impression from him that he really cares about the houses he builds and the satisfaction of his clients and I think that is truly evident in the finished product that we walked through this afternoon. I kept looking for issues and things that needed addressing as we were walking around and I just couldn't find any.  Everything was as good or better than I expected.  It was pretty nice being able to sign off on the checklist for the house and only have three things on it.  

1. Raise the light fixture in the stairwell a few links.  It sits a little lower than I'd like.  Not really an issue at all, more of a preference 

2.  Replace a window pane in the stairwell.  It was put on the list, but is already in the works to be replaced, they are just waiting on the new pane to arrive

3.  Remove the orange fencing behind the property 

Pretty simple list I think.  No fit, finish or construction issues at all.  Even the things that we'd noticed through our many visits to the house were usually corrected before we ever even had the chance to bring them up.  Again, I have to give the credit to our PM.  He's been 100% on top of this every step of the way.  

Which brings me back to the survey.  As someone that's worked in the automotive business my whole adult life, where Customer Satisfaction surveys are treated as life or death, I can 100% understand the emphasis that they put on their survey.  Mark went over it briefly with us and explained that it's important to Ryan and to him that we fill it out and of course he hopes we are happy with the house and feel as though we can give 10's on the survey.   I think this is something that a lot of people don't completely understand, and as someone that deals with this just about every day I'd like to take a second to cover this.  (if you don't care, or already know, feel free to skip down the the pictures!)  When they talk about hoping to receive a "10" for a score on their survey it is because anything less is considered a failing score.  Chalk that up to an archaic survey practice where anything less than perfect is unacceptable, but the reality is it's a pass/fail survey where perfect is "passing" and anything less is considered failing.  It's important to remember that when you're filling out your survey.  I've had many well meaning customers that loved the service they got at my facility but upon getting their surveys gave us less than perfect scores because they simply never give perfects because there is always room for improvement.  They didn't realize that even though they loved us and brought us cookies at christmas, they had hurt us with their response to a seemly innocuous survey.

Do not get me wrong,  I don't presume to tell anyone how they should rate their particular experience or the people involved, I just want people to understand the reality of the survey because a lot of people simply don't realize that it really is an all or nothing thing.

For us, we have been beyond happy with our PM and with all the other people involved in this process.  It hasn't always been easy and there have been a few obstacles that we've had to deal with, but as of today, we have no issues whatsoever with the people that have helped us build our home and we have nothing but positive things to say about all of them, and our PM Mark most of all.  He's made this a real pleasure for us.  

Now, on to a few pictures.  These are the last ones you'll see before paint, furniture and decorations.  I have about a million pictures of the entire process of this house however, so if you're reading this and would like to see something that isn't posted let me know and I'll see what I can do.

3 More Days to Go!!!