A fellow colleague from UCT walked past our house one Saturday morning while we were conducting the weekly family inspection meeting (us of the house and the boys of the sand heap)and commented that she did not know why clients insisted on being in their new houses before Christmas. I think I see her point.
We have been delayed for three weeks now waiting for our plans to be passed by the Council. Admittedly they have delivered as promised : 10 working days later we were notified via SMS that they were approved (see Stef's post). Unbelievably there is only one man in the whole of Cape Town who can sign off the plans and our plans were sidelined as he apparently attended meetings on the 2010 Stadium. The building inspector was not interested in visiting the site without the approved plans being physically on site.
The lesson learnt from the last depressing three weeks of little to no progress on the house, has been that if you want something done, no matter if you don't know the process, find out what it is and DO IT YOURSELF. Then you can't blame anyone else. Perhaps I am remembering my days as a professional QS working in industry "through a rosetinted fog", where performing one's professional duty, meant attending to the client's needs and meeting deadlines no matter what. Somehow I missed communicating the urgency of wanting the plans ready for approval before the builder started on site. That steadily changed to before the end of May, and by the end it was mid-June.
Not only have we been feeling down and despondent about our lack of progress during the last three weeks, but the builder and his team have also suffered. Hopefully we will be able to recover our gung-ho spirit from the start of the project and make up sometime while we have this beautiful sunshine. Even the boys were complaining that nothing had changed.
Now we start the battle all over again for the garage/flatlet...
