Recommendation: Often, a desire for control is really a desire to get enough information to be comfortable with what's happening. In fact, you will have less control during a project than you are accustomed to, no matter what the process. There's just too much going on for you to understand and stay on top of it all, unless you make it your full time job.
Some owners believe that by controlling the day-to-day activities they will prevent costly or irreversible mistakes. While this vigilance does catch occasional mistakes, it often feels like second guessing to the contractor, who probably would have caught the mistake himself. This is likely to make the contractor try to minimize communication with the owner, thereby increasing the possibility of mistakes.
The best way to feel in control is to choose a process that provides sufficient monitoring, supervision, and accountability to satisfy you that everyone is on the right track. You must also find people that you trust, because no amount of real or perceived control will feel like enough if you don't trust the people doing the work. Discuss with the architect and contractor your concerns beforehand, and ask them how they handle quality assurance, and what type of job-tracking they can provide to you.
The degree of control you feel is also related to the type of project you're doing. Mistakes can be made on any project, but they naturally increase as the job gets more complicated. If you're doing a large renovation project, it's not a question of if problems will occur, but how they will be dealt with when they do.
Knowing that problems are part of the process is part of having realistic expectations, which is critical to feeling good about the finished product. If you want perfection, you will absolutely be disappointed. Construction projects are incredibly complicated both physically and logistically. Simple variables like weather can have major impacts in schedule and cost.
David's Comment
Similarly, if you believe the contractor is out to cheat you, it will happen. Not because of self-fulfilling prophesies, but because there are many gray areas that can be interpreted as dishonesty. For example, the contractor may substitute a different material that saves him money, believing that it has no effect on the finished product. If discovered, you might feel cheated. But you may not know that s/he also fixed part of your roof that he wasn't required to, because he was already up there working. There's a lot of give and take on projects, and no job was ever built exactly as specified. Keep that in mind, and give him a chance to explain, before losing faith.
From a contractual standpoint, we recommend a variety of approaches to maintaining a sense of control, depending on the type of project you're planning:
- If your project is straightforward, and you don't intend to make design changes along the way, use a fixed-cost, architect supervised process.
- If your project is more complicated, and/or you would like to be able to change the design as you go, then we recommend cost-plus with architect supervision.
- If your project is straightforward and fairly simple, you don't intend to make changes, and/or is similar to something your builder has previously built, then you could use a fixed-cost contract with minimal consultation from an architect.
