One of the biggest lessons from our Covington project had nothing to do with construction.
It had to do with timing.
As we approached the finish line, the owners decided to make several upgrades to the project.
We added higher-end finishes, bullet-resistant glass, and a few other improvements. One of those changes included installing a grease trap, which affected plumbing work that had already been completed.
Whenever you make changes late in a project, there’s always the possibility that something else is affected.
Rather than waiting for final inspection and hoping everything passed, I decided to do something different.
I called the Newton County building inspector and asked if he would be willing to perform a courtesy walk-through before the final inspection.
He agreed.
During that visit, he identified a few items that needed attention before the official inspection.
None of them were major.
But every one of them would have cost more time, more money, and more frustration if we had discovered them at the end.
That one conversation changed the way I’ll manage projects going forward.
From now on, every major project will have an informal inspection well before we’re ready for final.
Not because I expect problems.
Because I expect to find opportunities to improve.
I’ve realized that great systems aren’t built by avoiding mistakes.
They’re built by creating checkpoints that catch mistakes while they’re still inexpensive to fix.
That principle applies far beyond construction.
Review your estimates before you submit them.
Test your systems before you depend on them.
Ask for feedback before you think you’re finished.
The earlier you invite another set of eyes into the process, the cheaper the corrections become.
Every project teaches something.
The successful companies are the ones that turn those lessons into permanent systems.
Covington gave me another one.
And that single process improvement will probably save CLB Builds countless hours—and our clients a lot of money—over the years.