This morning I swung by the construction site on my way to work. The air is so fresh up there in the mornings. At 7.45am the site engineer was already there, and he gave me a status update. At 8am the construction workers arrived in one truck, all wearing hardhats and orange shirts. We now have 20 workers on the site, up from 10 last week. There are three deep holes on the lot, and they are digging their way down to a depth 1.5m below the basement floor level.

After a while the architect arrived with his engineer, who was introduced to me for the first time. I am paying the architect a management fee to help ensure that the design will be implemented according to spec, and this engineer will be visiting the site several times a week to check on progress and to check on quality. During critical phases he will be there daily.

I spent a few minutes discussing with John (the architect) the fact that it might be nice to have a balcony also in the Master’s bedroom. After all, the view is really nice on that side of the house and it might be nice to sit and sip a cup of tea outside on Sunday mornings. We went over the drawings and agreed that it is doable. John promised to get back to me next week with a few sketches so I could see what the exterior would look like. We also reviewed the schedule with the site engineer. We’re planning for a 10-month schedule, but the builder is shooting for 7 months with some margin. I keep telling them not to rush and that quality is really important to me, but at the same time I know that their labor costs go up for every day they spend on the site.