Find The Dude, Rate The Dude

The world of contracting is not like fairy tales, most stories don’t end with a happily ever after. When you first meet your contractor, you walk feeling excited and upon your first visits on site, you are usually happy to notice that constant and positive progress is going on.

Then the first hiccups arise: you notice problems with the quality of some of the finish. You try to confront the contractor with your concern but he is suddenly unavailable. From then onward, instead of improving, the work goes on a steady decline.

The results don’t match your expectations, and you’re regularly being forced to choose between several bad options. Then delivery deadlines are missed and the project gets pushed beyond the original schedule, the initial costs get blown away, more and more unaccounted expenses keep coming.

You find yourself dealing with a subcontractor and end up antagonizing with him, making matters worse. The contractor, in turn, resents you for talking behind his back and this ends up aggravating an already tense situation. The blame game starts with everyone putting the blame on another.

You find yourself walking on eggshells and force yourself to be understanding while taking in the pressure from your own partners to get the project delivered. You wished you had put everything in writing and arranged regular meetings to discuss progress.

You consider cutting your losses by changing contractors but you can’t do so because you have already made a down payment and it will moreover be tough to get someone else to take over in the middle of the project at such short notice.

For most people, finding reliable talent in the construction, contracting or consulting business involves a fair bit of trial and error. And it needs not to be so. For this reason, Ducorp is launching FindRate (findrate.io) over the coming weeks. It is a free service whereby professionals and tradespeople are listed and rated by their customers pursuant to their professional work.

In this manner, you will get a reputation system from peers, to know who is the most suited to the task you have and is the most reliable and trustworthy.

XTM; 2019.