Growing up as a young boy, my Dad always said it is fine to make mistakes, but don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over. I have never claimed to be the smartest person, but I have tried to use his philosophy and have learned that when something repeatedly does not work it's time to move on.

For this reason, I really feel bad for the Building General Contractors in both the Commercial and Residential new construction markets, as they continue to make the same mistakes from project to project and fail to rationalize what went wrong. In fact, it seems as though they take a step or two backwards on the next project. They forget all the issues they just went through on the last project and look at the flooring contractor like they can’t believe you can’t deal with these issues. 

Dear Mr. General Contractor, 

You have beaten my profit margins to almost nothing. At the Job Start meetings you drill me about following the flooring manufacturer’s requirements and yet you continually give me working conditions outside any flooring manufacturer’s guidelines and expect perfection. You want to back charge me for things I have no control over. Also, by the time I can finally get onto the job, your project management schedule isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on because it is behind schedule and now I need to make up for lost time with every other trade working above me. 

Please let me help you resolve this, so we don’t have to keep on repeating the same scenario. 

Sincerely, The Flooring Contractor 

Let’s take a look as to what the Flooring Manufacturers require for Jobsite Conditions and then what the General Contractor continues to give us. 

Flooring Manufacturers; Areas to receive resilient flooring shall be clean, fully enclosed, weather tight with the permanent HVAC in operation. Resilient flooring should only be installed in temperature-controlled environments. It is required that the permanent HVAC system be in operation before the installation of resilient flooring. Temporary HVAC systems are acceptable. During the service life of the floor, the temperature should never rise above 100°F nor fall below 55°F. The performance of the flooring material and adhesives can be adversely affected outside this temperature range.