Chile Forum

Most of the stuff to do metal construction is available at Sodimac home centers in southern Chile. You can check their site for the prices more or less. Problem is workers that know what to do with it. Be prepared to give training courses.

I got to tell this story. I was at a BBQ / asado with one of our construction consultants a couple of weeks ago. He is Chilean, and oversees and approves the money for municipal projects in the 10th region.

I was trying to talk to him in a positive tone about the Chilean construction workers, the problems we have with them, and what how we might fix them (being polite, he is Chilean after all). No matter what I said about them he would cut me off with the Spanish equivalent of, 'no, they suck'.

I was like, "well mabie we can train up a crew from scratch".

He was like, "won't matter".

"Well perhaps we can weed out a custom crew and pay them well", I said.

"nope, won't matter".

He simply thinks that the rut of all evil in construction is the poor quality of the workers.

When I floated my idea about bringing in Mexican construction crews from the South West US, he thought that might work.

Well it does cut both ways. You can bring in good management, and put a crew in to shape. The problem is that they have been managed so poorly for so long that doing damage control in itself can be costly and perhaps simply inhumane.

Think about a crew say in the States. The guys typically worked their way up from basic sweep the floor to framing to managing a crew with good managers and good examples around them. If you try to slap together a work crew in Chile or fix a broken one overnight, you will have rebellion on your hands.

We have seen this with an international manager from Switzerland that came in to Chile to run a hotel. The workers complained and rebelled, and the owner replaced him with a Chilean manager (by the way, he was running the place in to the ground also). The workers and the community (he did not pay his bills on time) started wishing that the Swiss guy was back in charge in about a month.

It is simply how long it takes to readjust cultural traits that is at issue. Do you really want to spend the time and money to do it cold turkey. Careful planning is needed to pull it off, but it is possible. Most people however can not or will not retrain a construction crew just to build a house or cabin.

That is why we offer the construction consulting and the legal contract oversight for our clients. What we do is carefully put the burden of cost and expense to perform on the construction companies shoulders where it belongs. Payment based on contract performance basis. If you hire workers directly yourself, then you are at the mercy of their bad work habits and need to be on site.

If we can hold the contractor responsible for performance and quality, things get done. That means clear oversight, mile markers and inspection to get paid, and solid legal contracts that the company can not slip out from under when things are done wrong.