Good, Fast, or Cheap??
You can’t have all three. Especially in construction. You can often pick two, but you’ll need to forego the third. So when you are planning to hire a contractor you need to ask yourself which two are most important to you on this particular project.
There is an old adage (some would call it a law) regarding speed, quality and price that says you can have any two of the components but only at the expense of the third. And if one of them is really super crucially important, you may even need to sacrifice the other two altogether in order to ensure you get enough of the first.
You can have it good and fast, but it won’t be cheap.
Sometimes if you are willing to pay a little more you can get additional resources added to the project, or get some priority on scheduling placement. But good work takes time, so the more pressure is put on speed, the more cost will have to go into making sure things go right – as in… good.
You can have it cheap and fast, but it won’t be good.
This is what happens when you go with the low bidder. Or the contractor who is available to start a major project next week. Or, God forbid, the contractor is both. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You get what you pay for, and hopefully quality is something you are willing to pay for. In order to be cheaper, you have to sacrifice some quality. Either in the scope of repair and the materials used; or the expertise of the contractor. Good work takes a lot of training and a lot of experience. And that costs more.
You can have it good and cheap, but it won’t be fast.
There are only two ways to get something good and cheap in construction, and also save on time.
The first is to do some of the work yourself. Think house flippers and sweat equity. You can save time because you won’t have to wait for the schedules of others, and can even do some work in off hours, but ultimately it takes just as many swings of a hammer to get something done. What you are really saving is the cost of time. So if you don’t value your own time, technically you can save dollars out of pocket on a project and the project cost won’t include a lot of time.
The other way to sacrifice some time in order for good and cheaper is to offer to wait on the contractor. Let them use your project for “fill work”, when they have a gap in other project schedules. Not all contractors or types of contractors offer this, but sometimes you can get a bit of a deal doing something in the off season or waiting for when the timing is ideal for them. If it works for them and you aren’t in a rush, it can be a win-win.
In most situations though, good things take time. So if you value “Good” as much as we do, you’ll appreciate a contractor who places it first. Fast is a good number two, but only as much as is reasonable so as not to affect the Good.
This applies to projects large or small, simple or complex. It also applies to just about anything in life or business. But nowhere is it more true than in construction. That is why at Weather-Tite we are always deliberate in having this conversation with our potential customers.
Make sure to take some time and think through your priorities on this project. If one of these is super important, there are cases you may have to sacrifice both of the others. But most of the time, you can have two and a little of the third. So let us know which ones you need and we can tailor our project proposal to what is going to work best for you. Or determine if we are the best fit. And make sure to have the same conversation with anyone else you are considering working with as well.
If you were to rank them, which is first priority? Which is second? Are two of them equally important, or does one just totally eclipse the other two?
