If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times. So many of you invest a lot of time and energy in developing specifications for your buildings, only to find that the products you specify aren’t finding their way into your locations. Talk about frustrating!
Unfortunately, substituting products happens more often than you would like.
What Does This Mean For You?
“But wait – my General Contractor (GC) said they substituted “like for like.” Isn’t that good enough?”
I wish I could say that it was, but as we’ve discussed before, not all products that are classified alike are truly alike. This is especially true in the world of doors, locks, and hardware. If you have a Grade 2 door closer specified and it gets substituted with another Grade 2, you could be in big trouble. Hardware grades meet a minimum set of standards. That’s it – a minimum. The closer you specified could have been a superior Grade 2, and the one that got substituted could just barely meet the minimum set of standards. It won’t be long before you have to replace the substandard door closer, and trust me when I say those aren’t cheap.
Subpar hardware will lead to increased maintenance costs. It may not happen right away, but at some point in the not-so-distant future, these products will begin to fail. As they do, the price tag will add up.
Another issue that product substitution causes is an inconsistent look and feel across your locations. The color may be off, the finish may be slightly different, or the shape of the hardware could vary. Any one of these alone may not sound like a big deal, but try telling that to your design team. They put a lot of time and energy into developing the feel of the brand – right down to the hardware on your doors. While the financial impact of an inconsistent look is a hard one to calculate, my bet is that it’s not insignificant.
The Solution – Make Your Vendors Police Your Specifications
Plain and simple, someone needs to be accountable for ensuring that you get what you specified. If I’m a betting woman, you don’t have the bandwidth to be the only one accountable for all of the products in every plan set. Am I right? Lucky for you, you don’t have to be.
One great solution is making your vendors responsible for adhering to your specifications. To do this, all you have to do is list your vendors as “must buys” on the plans. That puts the onus on your vendors to ensure that they are sending out the specified products each and every time. Your vendors are incentivized to do so because it doesn’t benefit them to substitute products – it only hurts them.
If you have “must buys” and the GC purchases from someone else, you can go back on him/her. If you find out that your vendor is sending out the wrong product, you have a much bigger hammer to swing and a lot more negotiating power.
Have you had problems with product substitutions? What do you do to police your specifications?