Ever made a mistake that cost you or your company money? Yeah, me neither. At least not so far today, but it’s morning as I write this. So there’s still plenty of time for my daily mistake or two to happen.

When you do make a mistake, how quick do you own it? In other words, let your supervisor know. My advice would be fess up as soon as possible. Mistakes left unowned have consequences of compounding on top of each other. They’re cheaper to fix and cause far less damage if they’re dealt with as soon as possible.

It’s funny. Some construction companies act like they don’t make mistakes. They cover them up, don’t talk about them and pretend like they never happened. I don’t get that. At all.   That’s a key ingredient in the recipe for business failure.

If you work for a company like that, all I can say is I’m sorry. In my mind, mistakes are a good thing. It’s what we learn from. At my company, everyone was expected and encouraged to share when they made a mistake. That way we could all learn from it. So much cheaper than repeating a mistake over and over again.

Now as tradespeople, we know architects don’t make mistakes, right? It usually says so right on the front page of the plans. “If the Contractor notices discrepancies in the plans, specs and documents, it is the Contractor’s responsibility to bring this to the attention of the Architect and ask for clarifications.”

I mean we’ve all seen that. Architects don’t make mistakes. Discrepancies are noted and clarifications are called for. I get it. If I were an architect, I’d put the same disclaimer on my drawings too. I’ve found that it’s very rare for architects to agree to pitch in for any mistakes they did make. However, I really like those architects who own their mistakes. I strongly recommend them over the others whenever I can.

Some mistakes are minor and easily remedied. Some mistakes are plan driven. Others involve multiple trades, each interpreting an event to their own perspective. As a general contractor, those are the ones that can be the hardest to negotiate ownership, responsibility and accountability of.

Here’s a tip for solving those. Split the baby, like King Solomon proposed doing in the Bible.

Say for instance, you’re working on an old property and the landscaping contractor runs a trencher through an old sewer line. The plumbing contractor tells you not to worry about it, that it’s an old abandoned line. Your superintendent accepts that and the job goes on.

Weeks go by. All the landscaping is installed. The owners have moved in and they have their first guests in their guest house.

Guess what. That old abandoned sewer line was serving the guest house. Now the guests have the pleasant discovery that the shower has several inches of crappy water backing up into it.

The owners, your clients, aren’t too happy to have their guests experience this. They can’t use any of the drain lines in the guesthouse because they just contribute to the problem. So they’re looking at you, as the general contractor, like what happened and more importantly, what are you going to do about it?

You go to your plumber and landscaping contractor and let them know. Just clearing the line isn’t going to solve the problem. You all know about the old broken sewer pipe.

The plumber cameras the sewer line and confirms that the break is in the middle of the finished landscaped garden. Who’s going to pay to dig it up, make the repair, backfill and redo the landscaping as quickly as possible? Certainly not the owner. It wasn’t their fault.

You could try and pin it on one trade, like the landscaper. But they brought it to your attention as soon as they did it. So the plumber bears some responsibility for giving you bad information.  But then your superintendent accepted that information rather than doing his own checking. So the general contractor also bears some responsibility.

Obviously, it would have been a lot cheaper to fix it when it first happened. You would have maintained good will with the client by preventing an embarrassing experience and saved yourself a lot of headaches..

So who is going to pay for this? You could try and apportion the costs, like try and give the lion’s share of the burden of costs to the landscaper and some to the plumber. In some situations, that’s the right thing to do, a pro rata share, especially on bigger and more complicated mistakes. It just takes a lot of time and negotiation to work those situations out.

But on more common situations, it just needs to be fixed ASAP.  However, I've found that unless you get 100% buy-in on the front end of this work from your trades, the general contractor will eat most of the costs as the trades waffle out of it. So here's how to avoid that. After all, you, as the general contractor, have to maintain your reputation with your client, so you are going to take care of it, no matter what. You'd just like your trades to be accountable as well. 

So I get the owners of the two companies and my superintendent on site as soon as possible. I’ll say, “We’ve got this problem. We all had a hand in it. We need to fix it. Quickly, neatly, professionally, without complaining. Let’s get ‘er done. Are we all in agreement on that?”

They’ll nod yes.

Then I’ll say, “We’ve also got to accept how we’re going to be responsible for this since it involved all three of our companies. We could try and apportion the costs, but my preference is that everyone put all their costs of the fix into the hopper and we come up with the total and split it 3 ways. Are we all in agreement with that?”

Now in this case, the plumber might say, “Wait a minute. I’ve only got a 4 hour repair job here. That’s a small portion of the costs compared to trenching, backfilling and re-landscaping.”

I’ll nod and say, “You’re absolutely right. Your repair work is a small portion of the overall costs. However, your responsibility is greater than that because we relied on you for good information when the landscaper first broke the pipe. You gave us bad information. So it appears to me that you in fact caused the additional costs that we’re incurring today.”

“Now,” I say, looking at everyone, “since one of us broke the pipe and one of us gave us bad info, I could say it’s both your fault and let you two work it out. However, as the general contractor, we have a responsibility here too. So, again I’m proposing the simplest fix in that we take everyone’s hard costs for the repair work, including our supervisor's time and divide it thirds.”

I’ll let that soak in for a moment or two.

Then here’s the key point in this approach. I’ll look at everyone again, the landscaper, the plumber and my superintendent and say, “Are we in agreement here?” and then just be quiet.

It’s important to not say anything else. Let the silence get louder and fill the void. It might be a long minute or two until you get agreement.  You just have to wait. Hardest thing in the world to do.

If the plumber is still balking at owning his full share, you’ll have to keep working at it. It’s important that you keep the landscaper and your superintendent there during this protracted negotiation. The plumber needs to feel the peer pressure from his fellow trades. No one gets to leave the meeting until there’s 100% agreement. Otherwise, the plumber will balk later on down the road about owning it.

When there’s 100% agreement, it’s important everyone looks each other in the eye and shakes hands on it.  All we have in this world is our word and our handshake. Then the work commences. Let’s get ‘er done ASAP and rebuild some good will with our clients, the owners.

Congratulations! You just solved a tricky situation quickly by splitting the baby. I guess old King Solomon was a pretty wise man. Maybe that’s why he’s in the Bible.