How do you keep your client informed during a build?
Every builder knows the call: „how's it going?” It takes two minutes and it costs you an hour. The annoying part is that the client is right — they've handed over their house and have no idea what's happening. Below are four ways to solve that, with an honest account of what each one costs.
1. Phoning when there's something to report
What most builders do, and it works up to a point. With one job running it's fine. With three it's six calls a week, and they always land while you're up a ladder.
The real problem isn't the time but the memory. You mention on Tuesday that the pipes have been rerouted, and by Friday nobody remembers whether that was before or after the plastering. If there's a dispute about extras later, it's your word against theirs.
2. A WhatsApp group on site
The most popular alternative, and it starts well: everyone's already on it, photos are one tap away. Three weeks later it's unusable.
What goes wrong isn't the app but the shape. A group chat runs in time order, and a build doesn't — a build runs room by room. The bathroom photo sits between a question about the kitchen and a message that the plasterer is off sick.
- Photos disappear between two hundred messages.
- Your client reads along when your trade says a wall isn't straight.
- Finding something from three weeks ago takes ten minutes.
- Anyone who later leaves the group takes nothing with them.
3. A shared folder of site photos
Better than a group chat: the photos stay put and you can make a folder per room. It falls over on discipline — someone has to actually upload those photos every day and put them in the right folder.
In practice the builder does that in the evening, or not at all. And a folder of photos without a word of explanation shows what is there, not why.
4. One fixed place per room
It comes down to this: your client doesn't want messages, they want an answer to one question — what has happened in my house? That answer is ordered by room, not by day.
Set it up that way and the conversation changes. The client has already seen the week before you turn up, so it stops being about what happened and starts being about what's next. That's a better conversation for both of you, and a shorter one.
Whatever you choose: write it down
The main reason to sort this out has nothing to do with service. A build runs for months, and at the end there is always a conversation about extras, about delays, or about something that turned out to be rotten behind a wall.
You have that conversation with photos and dates, or with your memory. The first costs you ten seconds a day. The second can cost you thousands.