Building before Xmas

I am in the process of setting up a miniscule super clinic in Kings cross with the aid of the federal government. I can use the infrastructure money to fit out the second flat I have rented next to my existing practice. It will be fantastic if I can find some fellows to paint, plumb and create a stud wall but I did not factor in the silly season and tradies lassitude

Don’t try to have any building work done between now and Christmas. There is an unspoken rule about the last weeks of the year being unobtainable at any price. Every contractor and tradesmen worth his salt is flat out hammering drilling and plumbing. This frenzied time occurs every year and Sydney closes down for the languorous period from Christmas to Australia Day. The building trades pack up their tools and rightly disappear up or down the coast to attend to their own tumbledown piles which require maintenance not provided in the year of the School stimulus building program that seized everybody who could wield a tool like dengue fever on a hot night in Bali.


Add to this torpor the sheer obstinacy and bureaucratic minefield of the local council who will not feel the same sense of urgency to provide Development applications or Construction Certificates in a timely fashion. The paperwork is mind boggling: the copies the plans the CDs the pdfs all in quadruplicate before the bureaucrats wuill look at it. Woe betide anyone who leaves paperwork unfinished. The council stamp of authority will be withheld. And what’s worse is the crappy old block of flats I work in is heritage listed. Frankly I cannot see the architectural worth for the life of me but there you are. A heritage impact statement is the next thing

Any pressure applied to councils seems to have a strangely inverse effect on the passage of paperwork though the system. It is full of twists and turns that resemble a blocked lower colon without sufficient innervation to produce any result in the time allotted. Complaints fall on cloth ears: Irritability and rising blood pressure are seen as seasonal affectations which must be borne in the spirit of the Christmas.

“Mate I’d love to help you but I have three jobs on the go before Christmas and I am flat out. I could get one of my mates to help you out though. He doesn’t have a building ticket and lost his drivers licence last week for drink driving but he is a great bloke and will fix the stud wall quickly. That is if he doesn’t get nicked on his outstanding warrant between now and New year. Want his number? I’ll SMS it to you. But don’t spread his name around. Know what I mean? He is the last card in my deck.” So goes the inevitable refrain.

And if by chance you are lucky to get somebody to work for you, they do it in fits and starts because they are doing seventeen other jobs at the same time. Multi tasking gone mad. So bad is the situation that your builder may forget that he started the job at your address and never return til the next downturn in the building industry. This may be in two years time. Suddenly he will arrive on the doorstep with a forlorn expression asking how the job is going. His apprentice will have jumped ship and his ute unrepaired after a serious smash. He will have a lumbar crush fracture and be working in a brace.

So you start again only to discover the construction certificate is no longer valid and a bit more hair falls out while that nasty twitch in your left eye makes you look a bit crazy. The concretor looks up and asks poignantly….

“Are you okay, Doc?”

Season’s greetings to all builders labourers, gyprockers and council employees. Now get to work!