controversy in construction often comes down to people not communicating well and people not giving each other the benefit of the doubt. A lot of that goes away when you can pick up the phone, clarify where you stand, and hear the other person out. If you’re reasonable and you have the ability to accept some fault here and there and not just try to deflect blame, then that also goes a long way.” “In construction, a lot of people are just trying to deflect at every turn,” he adds. “I think that’s what often frustrates clients. Then there’s a spiral, because once clients are frustrated they’re a little bit less reasonable, and things propagate in a negative direction.” “I like to think that the biggest thing that sets us apart – beyond the obvious, which is the price – is how we carry ourselves,” he continues. “It’s all about how we navigate the inevitable issues that are going to be present in a construction project. That’s particularly important in restoration. We’re not building ground-up, we’re dealing with existing structures that have unknowns about them, and we’re going to run into those unknowns. There’s no way from a design perspective to foresee everything that we’re going to run into. We have to be able to work together with all of our stakeholders in order to navigate those issues, which will inevitably pose challenges to budget and pose challenges to schedule. I think people return to us because they appreciate the way we approach those challenges.” Of course, HRI also delivers a very high standard of quality – Clay calls that their “other obvious” point of difference. He partly credits the company’s quality control to, once again, their ability to communicate and collaborate: “There’s usually always some form of a third party consultant involved in our projects, whether it’s an engineer or an architect,” he explains. “We look to engage with them early on.” “We also involve and engage with the product manufacturer’s reps,” he adds. “That’s of massive importance. We work with lots of different products for lots of different situations – but the people who rep those individual products deal with those products every single day. They should know the products even better than the consultants who specified the products. They are incredibly knowledgeable. They are really good resources for information in terms of quality control.” APRIL 2023
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