Congress 2009 (Part 3) Best practice and Consumer Protection

Master Builders South Africa (MBSA) recently held it’s Annual Congress at the Sandton Convention Centre.  One of the highlights was a panel discussion around the issue of Consumer Protection and Quality Assurance.  Present on the panel were:

Dr Rodney Milford of the CIDB
Cas Coovadia of the Banking Association
Fred Wagenaar of the NHBRC
John Mathews from Garden Cities Incorporated, a Contractor involved in building of homes
Adrian Goslett from Remax, a leading Estate Agency.

The Challenges

The discussion accepted the fundamental premise that the industry experiences a large number of complaints around quality, time, cost and the scope of building projects.  It was accepted that these issues would not go away and that all roleplayers in the industry needed to apply themselves to ensuring increased customer satisfaction. 

One of the issues identified is that the entry level for home builders is very easy.  Many so-called home builders do no posses the necessary qualifications or experience to deliver a quality product, for the right price within a reasonable period of time.  This challenge often interacts with a second dynamic in that the developer/home owner/consumer is also unfamiliar with the building process.  Many will only undertake a project a few times in their life and have no idea how to manage the project from their side.

This problem is exacerbated in the cases where the project is of a relatively low value.  Large developments and upmarket housing projects generally have the advantage of having a professional team on board who, theoretically at least, act as intermediaries between the client and the builder and by the very nature of their activities ensure a degree of quality assurance. 

It was suggested that the element of trust is often lacking in the building agreement and that this trust needs to be nurtured by those in a position to do so in order to turn the situation around.  It was unanimously accepted that consumers need to be educated in order to understand the different elements at play in a building project.

Price vs Quality

Chief among the issues to be addressed is the question of price.  Consumers naturally always look for the best deal and mistakenly believe that paying as little as possible for having their development built is a way of achieving this.  Due to the proliferation of building enterprises, including those who are not appropriately skilled to see projects through professionally, it is easy for consumers to find contractors who offer to build for what appears to be considerably less than the average market rate.  What consumers don’t understand is that there is a minimum amount of money which needs to be spent in order to ensure that projects are fit for their intended purpose. If this amount is undercut by a contractor, this contractor will be running that particular job at a loss.  As contractors are not likely to do this, or if they do they will go out of business, they will then take shortcuts.  This will almost always impact on quality and the consumer will not be getting the products that they believe they should get.

It is also accepted that contractors themselves need to be responsible for maintaining their professionalism.  By remaining firm with regard to adhering to quality and safety standards, contractors do run the risk of not getting all the work that they tender for, but this is a way of ensuring that they do not end up in situations where there is a possible dispute around quality.

The Way Forward

It was generally agreed that quality cannot be regulated and that regulations do however have a place to ensure minimum standards of safety and performance.  It was recognised that membership of a Master Builders Association was often a good guide to whether a consumer could expect quality as these Associations do have codes of ethics and expect their members to deliver quality workmanship.  The panel concluded that the Master Builders Associations and Master Builders South Africa needed to take the lead to ensure quality work by their members and that this would establish and maintain a healthy environment of self regulation.  MBSA could even consider setting up an Ombudsman and demonstrate that it has teeth insofar as ensuring quality by the MBA members on the ground. 

It was also agreed that there need to be more effective processes where role players could take these matters further jointly and that the total industry needed to support the initiatives.  In this way builders could be held accountable for their workmanship without having to work within a rigid regulatory regime that often created hurdles rather than effectively ensuring quality and ultimately consumer protection.

Brandon Abdinor | Executive Director

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