Construction Process

Who Schedules The Contractors?

In the construction of a house, typically there can be 40 – 45 contractors or vendors involved in getting to the finished home.  After the building permits are obtained at the city, the construction process will include the functions of purchasing, scheduling, and invoice payments.  With production homebuilders, the system is quite sophisticated when you consider that maybe 500 homes are being built on an annual basis.

While the purchasing function is often conducted inside the corporate or divisional office, the scheduling of the contractors is often handled in the field by the site supervision.  With the purchasing department already having administered signed contracts, the site superintendents follow an initial construction schedule with the goal of getting the house built in the most expedient timeframe.  Thus, you might have the framing contractor scheduled a few weeks out based on the current status of the foundation contractor.  The goal is to have contractors following each other in a timely manner, rather than having a few-week gap because the contractor wasn’t notified in advance.

The reason that the scheduling occurs most often in the field is that the initial schedule does not always play out.  Issues and weather delays can affect the current contractor on site and the site superintendent is the most likely person to understand how to adjust the schedule.  Contractors will not be pleased to show up and the job site is not ready for them – which can lead to added costs.  And although the project may be behind schedule, the site superintendent will have first hand knowledge whether current contractors can make up the schedule and therefore schedule downstream contractors accordingly.

As always, we welcome your comments and questions below.