[MD] New work, old work

[David Thomas]

John,

> Many times I used to debate quality issues with my old partner.  He read
> ZAMM, most of the way through, and we'd talk about the significance of
> installing quality patterns into what you do.  At the time, the idea was to
> be successful as a business.  But as it turned out, caring about the quality
> of your work isn't that conducive to building up a good construction
> business.   Business runs on profit and profit comes from skimping, hiring
> illegal aliens to work cheap while buying flashy-looking equipment that
> looks impressive to intimidate your clients into signing; taking shortcuts
> and cheating.
> 
> I have a lot of contempt for the majority of practitioners of my chosen
> profession.

Is that contempt rightly placed?

I am not talking about the obvious crooks, criminals, who have no intention
of doing anything other than defrauding their clients. I am talking about
builders of all different types and sizes that try, to the best of their
ability, to do "good" work at a prices that allows them to continue to do
that over time.

As a son of a startup pickup contractor my exposure to construction started
before I was a teenager. I became a union journeyman rough carpenter upon
turning 18. I worked primarily on concrete formwork on dams and other
industrial type projects off and on until I graduated from college in
architecture in 1972. I interned with small architectural firms and became a
registered architect in 1974. The bulk of all my work since then has been
done by the design-build method. Under this method the owner, general
contractor, and architect are all on board at the start of the design
process and work together over the course of the whole project. For the past
nearly 40 years I worked on everything from small remodels and houses to
manufacturing plants of over 400,000 square feet. Mostly larger commercial
and industrial work though. During that time I cannot even guess how many
different construction firms and people I have worked with. But I can say
that the owners always got exactly, or more than, what they asked for at the
price they agreed to. Now did some of the people involved over promise and
underperform? Of course. But over the long haul the majority of the
contractors and all their subs did the best job they could with the cards
they were dealt. 

Was it really "good," "quality" work?

If one listens to and believes social and architectural critics none of it
was. It was all sprawl and greedy corporations expanding their stranglehold
over unwitting consumers and downtrodden labor. Not an acclaimed piece of
"Art" in the whole bunch. Not that any of the clients were asking for "art"
in the first place.

Who's fault is that?

Even though all of this work provided "better" places to work, new jobs, and
less expensive products than the before these projects were there, you imply
in part it's the builders fault. I could have just as easily suggested it's
the fault architects like me. Both counts are wrong in IMHO. Here is where
RMP helps. Ideas are potentially the highest quality patterns but they have
no legs. The arms, legs, hands, head, and heart that pounds the nails is way
down on the biological/physical level. As is all the built world. So unless
good ideas somehow capture the attention and are adopted by the social level
in a big way nothing "good" happens down there. So buildings are not a
leading indicator of what is going on in a society but a lagging one. Ideas
must change first, then societies adopt them, then the environment is
changed to reflect those ideas.

Are the problems perceived in the built world due to a lack of "good" ideas?

I don't believe so. Take the current "energy crisis" for example. When I was
in college nearly 50 years ago we were discussing ecology, passive solar
design and all the other planning issues to reduce energy consumed by
building. Hell, my first failed attempt at my own practice was called,
"Thomas & Sun."  Why did it fail? By trying to sell ideas that the public
wasn't buying. My guess is that your problems were similar. So from my
perspective the built quality of the environment is exactly the quality the
society wants. No more, no less. Until their values change what you see is
what you got. And no amount of idealistic architects or builders, by
themselves, are going to change that in any significant way. Real crises do.

I'm kinda cheering on global warming, hurricanes, floods, and pestilence!
Hold the fire and brimstone though :-)

Dave