In the front lines

Ben Woods.
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Unrealistic expectations, in terms of time and cost, are still a major obstacle facing contractors in the region. CID caught up with a selection of industry experts to learn more about the challenges they face

As the final link in a chain that is often fraught with delays, marred by miscommunication and overrun with conflicting demands, interior contractors have a unique and, arguably, unenviable set of challenges to contend with.

Issues of time and money, the universal business bugbears, seem even more acute at this end of the scale, as contractors struggle to make up delays, meet final deadlines and facilitate the constant yet contradictory quest for high quality at low cost. Even a slight delay at every other point in the development chain leaves the contractor with limited room for manoeuvre.

“The first major issue that most interior contractors face is time,” confirmed Ramachandran V, general manager of Touchwood Décor & Furniture. “A lot of time is taken on the design part of a project. Afterwards, the client will send for a quotation, which they want very fast – but after the quotation is given they will take a long time on the decision making process.

“Then they want the whole job to be done in a very short span. Whereas, actually, the execution is the most difficult part of the project,” he detailed.

Timeframes need to be more realistic, he continued, and interior contractors shouldn’t have to bear the burden of delays that occur earlier on in the development process. “Let’s say you take a two-year project. There might be a lag of six months from the civil contractor but when the job is handed over to the interior contractor, the message is: ‘I want the completion date to stay as agreed.’ How is the interior contractor expected to make up those six months?”

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Timelines are affected by a whole host of logistical challenges, especially when contractors are working on a number of projects at the same time, Talal Saeed, managing partner of Fino International, pointed out. The difficulties in juggling resources, both human and material, are rarely appreciated – and almost never accounted for by the client. 

“They always say ‘we want this done in 12 or 14 months, whereas you actually need twice that amount of time. You cannot do three or four projects and finish them all together. There are challenges in terms of logistics, freight forwarding, people, accommodation for the workers and transport to the site, for example.”

Sourcing, acquiring and importing materials also takes longer than many clients will typically allow for. “Generally, clients always want things faster than you can get them. With furniture and lighting and things like that, it can take up to 12 weeks to get things from the US or from Europe. I think sometimes there is a lack of understanding on the lead time for products,” suggested Ben Woods, account manager sales at Summertown International.

This is especially true when specifying for clients that are particularly precise about the materials they require. Currently involved in fitting out the Armani Hotel Burj Dubai, Fino International has found itself with a client that is very specific in its demands. “They had very high specifications in terms of materials.

If you want to buy marble, for example, you have to buy it from a particular source, as specified by them. You have to buy the proper specified material and you have to look into how you transport it, how you ship it, how you process it, how you cut it, up until the installation stage,” Saeed explained. “So, the specifications that the Armani team put into this project were very high and very sophisticated, and it would not have been possible to meet them in a short amount of time,” he continued.
 

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