It looked like a great team that the homeowners had assembled: the architect; the general contractor; landscape, pool and interior designers; and a small army of consultants from lighting to home automation and video distribution specialists.
The meeting was seemingly long, but even if only one thing was achieved that day, it would run its course throughout the project. The homeowner made sure that everyone involved knew exactly what he was looking for. In just about a year and a half from now, when the homeowner would turn on a switch, the landscape designer knew that the light colour would be coordinated with the swimming pool lights, and it would all show up on the elegant touch panels that were dispersed in various locations through the house. The waterfall that was specially tuned such that the calming sounds would drown out the sound of the nearby resort was set to come on only when someone was in the room.
This amount of automation does not go in every house. Coordination between all parties involved is key. In most cases, the general contractor coordinates all these different traders and consultants. Today, with a myriad of newly developed technologies with the desire to make homes as efficient as possible, this has become a task that requires a lot more than it has in the past. Many contractors find themselves hiring specialists to assist in achieving the ultimate goal. It’s all got to work. At some of the larger projects, we see construction managers making the liaison between the workforce and the homeowner, sometimes putting themselves in a precarious position of interdependence.
Homeowners want more sophistication, and in our trade, we need to be prepared and schooled to not only build the swimming pool, we also need to be there to see it through and provide ongoing services to ensure that these beautiful structures are enjoyable for their owners. If I had just bought a nice Lamborghini, it would be unlikely I would hand the keys to an 18-year-old. So handing over a complex water shape with automated controls, fill features, waterfalls and automatic chemical dosing systems to the available gardener may not be in the best interest of longevity.
During that same initial construction meeting, the long-term requirements of the structure or shape should be put on the table by the builders, so that educated decisions can be made by the clients involved. For many a successful project that was completed on time and on budget, the initial meetings were key to setting the expectations and clearly defining the borders of each field of expertise. Once the stage is set, one can feel a dedication develop, a passion if you will, to let everyone’s expert input to create a result that is better than the sum of all.
