The importance of surrounding yourself with good trade people

As a Building Contractor with the obligation of delivering a high quality work every time as the only way to safeguard my company reputation and well being I learnt a long time ago of the importance of surrounding yourself with good trade people.

A good trade person is not only the one that does his job better and faster and not for sure cheaper, in my personal opinion a good trade person is the one that recognize how important his work really is as a part of a whole project. Positive attitude, honesty and decency are all qualities I need in the people I share my work with.  

It can take sometime to develop these relationships but once you find them its very important to make them grow and keep them. 

Its our company policy to pass information to our clients about the trades ( electrician, plumber, tapers ) that we will be subcontracting work to on each specific project, they become representatives of our company abilities to hire and manage good trade people and its my responsibility to stock in the best people to be found.

Sometime ago, in need of a drywaller for a project, a company we used to work with send us someone with a nasty attitude and very poor workmanship, this episode was a deal breaker  as we had to rush and fix and clean before anyone including our client could see such a disaster. Not before taking some pictures to defend our case and have a memorandum of how not to do a job. Luckily having good employees on site helped to catch this situation on time  and minimize the compromising repercussions.                                                                                         I proud myself of being very selective whenever I have to hire either employees or trades to work with but obviously once in a while we will be indirectly expose to this type of workmanship, its our obligation to catch it on time, fix it and do all we can to avoid it again.                                                                                                                      In scenarios like that I always remember what a painter finishing ( painting ) my trim work in a project once told me : he said " a labor works with his back, a trade person with his hands and a craftsman with his heart .... and you will always know looking at his work "