DARe-me Consulting Engineers Ltd - Glasgow

Lewis

I’m going to share an email I sent the MD several weeks ago and haven’t had any response to. We’re nearing the end of a 2 year build and have come across a good few dodgy contractors - there is a real shortage of skill in the building industry and huge demand, so cowboys manage to thrive. Dare-ME aren’t cowboys by any means, but they are without doubt the single biggest mistake I’ve made during the project, and if I hadn’t eventually disregarded their drawings and taken on a new firm, at best we’d not have finished the project.

I’ve thought about posting this and after learning that several other firms have found themselves in similar situations I thought this may help someone in the future avoid such situations.

….

I feel that I should share some feedback with you, I suspect you'll not take it onboard, but if I were in your position I would hopefully appreciate the candid review.

I've just received a full set of M+E drawings today from another firm, who I commissioned earlier this month to do the work you've done. I'll go through the process which brought me to that point below.

The spec which you put together was, in the opinion of everyone who saw it - tradespeople tendering, other M+E consultants, architects, engineers - wildly over the top. To the point it hasn't been financially viable to do any of it. There seemed to be a complete lack of common sense which only became apparent as I became familiar with the scheme as the project progressed.
On the heating front, the plumbers pointed out that a simpler, cheaper and allround better solution would have been underfloor heating downstairs. Unfortunately this wasn't raised until after we had poured the floor. Instead we have these ridiculous radiant panels which were air-freighted from Canada at considerable cost.
The MVAC system was costed at around £60,000 without grilles and all the fittings. It was redesigned and is now £40k with all the fittings and the same tech spec.
I know that you'll say the air-source heating system was perfectly spec'd, but the 4 electricians we went out to all came back saying it was something you'd expect to fit in a school or a building of similar size, and was far too big to sit on the roof as you'd planned, and the cost would be 3-4 times what it needed to be. In the end we went with a gas boiler.
The electrics had 2 distribution boards and I'm told that there wouldn't be enough power to supply the 400amp one anyway, we now have one at 100amps.
The water I'm told wouldn't work with the size of input we have (it's the smallest pipe size and we're fed at the end of the line of 3 shops next door) we've redesigned this to have a pumped storage tank.

The feedback we've got at every step is that the items are unnecessarily expensive and over-spec'd.

Building is expensive, and this has been financially draining. I wouldn't have had any chance of completing this if we'd used your drawings.
What's worse though is your attitude. Everyone who has spoken with your company has been exasperated to some extent; there's a complete lack of humility and a 'we know best' approach, which has meant throughout the project, whenever an issue with the M+E drawings came up, someone would point out 'there's no point in asking Dare-me'.

I'm sure we've not been perfect either in this process, and it's human nature to dismiss all this, but I think you would benefit from reflecting on some of it as there are a good few people in the construction industry who I suspect will now go out of their way to warn off people from working with you.