Now all the work we need done by Scotframe is done, I am posting here the complaint letter I sent to Scotframe in February after a litany of disasters that impacted our project, brought to head by being told, 10 days before the frame delivery, that they wouldn’t make the date and they didn’t know when they could get it to me.

The letter resulted in getting the frame delivery for one week later, but none of my other queries or complaints were followed up.

To: Cecil Irwin

Date: 13 February 2015

Subject: Urgent for Cecil Irwin: Response Needed Today

Dr Mr Irwin

I am writing in some urgency to obtain a date for delivery of my house. I have scaffolding coming in on Monday and so I need to know today at the very latest, a delivery date for the kit so that I know when to arrange the scaffolders to come. I had been advised by two separate members of your staff that you were the only person who could help me with my query but you did not return my calls yesterday.

What I have experienced the past couple of days I think throws up some serious problems in your company and I would like a response to this as well, although appreciate you will need longer than today to get back on this issue.

I have been working to a date of 23 February since October when we set the date and, as you will know, building a house involves a lot of other factors to be arranged. I have paid you around 90% of the total costs already.   I have scaffolding coming in on Monday and a crane arranged for 23rd February. I have also booked four days off work and a cottage to stay in during the erection.

I called on Tuesday to check that everything was going to plan and was told that, not only was it not going to be ready for 23rd. There was no way that I could be given a date for the delivery of my kit. This is really not acceptable 10 days before a kit arrives that was booked in so many months ago.

I asked what was going on and apparently X can’t give me a date until he has the drawings on his table. I asked him to find out when the drawings would be on his table from the appropriate colleagues but he said that he couldn’t find out and that the only thing I could do to find out when my kit would be ready was to call the Managing Director, yourself.

I found this extremely odd, as you can imagine, and concerning as it suggested a disfunctionality to the way that your company is managing relationships between departments.

I called Y who had been dealing with me over the steel beams and asked if and when the drawings would be ready. He also suggested that you would be the person to speak to. I tried Z, who I have also had dealings with over engineering and technical matters who told me the floor and roof drawings were already with X and they were waiting on the walls. He couldn’t tell me any more than that.

All this was happening on Tuesday. Only 10 days before I had been told my kit would be ready.

My architects and I have already had to wrestle figures out of the technical department three times in the process of this build.

Firstly – back in September – We had to put the foundation build on hold for some considerable time while awaiting the layout for the foundation walls and we ended up having to wait weeks for this to be done.

Secondly getting the information for building control was painfully slow. In the end it was good that we had to put back the erection from late September to February due to there being a BT line in the way as we didn’t actually manage to get the right information from your engineers for building control until January 12th. Fortunately all the other documents were already with building control and once they had this final bit of information they could issue the warrant.

Again this week there appear to be even more last minute issues that weren’t done or flagged up at either of the first two stages and that mean the build is having to be put back.

Over the period of dealing with you, my architects and I have been dealing with at least 6 different people within your company and with your engineers direct. This creates issues of communication within your own company as no one person in Scotframe appears to know what is going on and have the overview. You don’t prioritisie effectively – I was being asked about the colour of the front door back in August and the windows were ordered up in late summer, months and months before we could have started the build because we didn’t have the appropriate plan for the foundations from you nor any of the information we needed for building control (as I said, this eventually arrived in January). Ordering the windows so ludicrously far in advance has caused you problems of storage and at one point X was trying to get me to store them onsite – which was totally impossible.

My immediate issue is needing a firm delivery date today. But I would also like to let you know that due to their experiences with Scotframe, our architects have already warned one client keen to use your system away from Scotframe.

I would like to know what you are planning to do to ameliorate the evident issues I have experienced. When I called the crane company to reschedule they said that Scotframe is always late and cause a lot of problems for clients so I think you need to do something to change the way people experience your level of service in the ground.

However right now I need a delivery date so that I can shift all of the organisation I have put in place. So please get back to me with this today. I am interviewing candidates for a job all day today but can check emails and will return a call when I get a break.

Yours