A Fort Worth home builder may seek to reduce the building budget by investigating alternative costings from an overseas manufacturer who deliver pre-fabricated cabinets or windows, which can then installed by local labor.
Transnational cost comparisons are often too good to ignore but like everything else in the building industry – ‘the devil is in the detail’. The cost comparison on cabinetwork, window joinery or the like, are often not on a comparative basis as construction details may not be supplied/equal or even understood by the overseas manufacturer. If details are drawn and described by the residential builder in english with references to the International Building Code; then there is a significant amount of trust and faith in the overseas manufacturer ‘s english language skills to ensure the product that arrives at site can be cost effectively installed.
A recent discussion with a Fort Worth home builder detailed an account where a client purchased Chinese window frames in the efforts to yield an approximate 65% budget saving on the aluminum window joinery. Unfortunately the Chinese window manufacturer misinterpreted window heights with the window widths – a costly lesson for the Dallas Fort Worth home builder client as the pre-assembled window frames did not fit the project’s already constructed brickwork openings. Upon closer inspection, the builder observed that all the windows were 12mm thickness toughened glass – requiring the Fort Worth home builder to double his labor for installation across the building storeys due to the frame and sash weights. Other Fort Worth home builder reports of aluminum windows leaking across multi-residential apartment projects and windows arriving on-site unassembled, are real events that will effect profitability on any Fort Worth home builder project.
A Fort Worth home builder client’s potential budget savings by sourcing overseas manufacturers rather than engaging local custom cabinetmakers or window joinery fabricators, are often a false economy as they aren’t competing on equal grounds – just as the AT & T Stadium playing surface is vastly different to the Arrowhead Stadium Bermuda turf. Fort Worth home builder should approach overseas window joinery or cabinetwork procurement cautiously as it may have a serious an impact on their business.
With the rise of Alibaba and other B2B marketplaces internet sales are here to stay, so a builders require risk mitigation when trying to procure Chinese prefabricated products to a Texan building site due to possible budget and program blow-outs. On-site feedback seems to be consistent that no amount of contract, drawing or specification information by a Fort Worth home builder matters if you’re not speaking the same, “…crack-a-lacking language…”
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