The Permit Dash

For once, some good news on the project: my contractor got the permit way ahead of schedule. On the other hand, I wasn’t really prepared for them to get it so quickly. It was supposed to take about a month from contract signature; it wound up taking about two days.

It took about a week of back-and-forth with my building manager to get the sign off from my condo association for the project. At which point, the contractor applied for the permit.

When we were going over the contract, it was explained to me that it would take about 30 days to get the permit. Not because it had to, but because that’s the time limit the City of Boston operates under, and, in my team’s experience, they usually took the whole window.

Thus my immense surprise when, two days later, I got a phone call from the contractor that the permit was approved, and they were ready to go. I got the impression they could’ve started the next morning had I been ready.

Before they start, however, I’m going to have to move all my stuff out of the work area. Most of this will go elsewhere in my apartment or my building. I have basement storage in the basement, and I bought a $20 Ikea garment rack to hold my clothes in the (relative) safety of my bedroom. That’s been my weekend project, hauling one box of stuff down to the basement after another.

The stickier issue is getting the larger pieces of furniture out, like my dining table. That really won’t fit anywhere else, and so I needed to find a moving and storage company.

I keep thinking there’s a business opportunity buried in the madness of finding movers, in the same way I found the process of finding a contractor so fraught. If there’s anything even remotely non-standard about your move, no one reads the notes, and the estimate doesn’t seem to take the details into account. Plus there’s all the other complication of having to get a parking permit from the city and from my condo association to make sure the move is allowed.

I think I’ve found movers, a nice technology-forward company called Small Haul, that focuses on small moving jobs, and who (blessedly) has a storage partner that isn’t at capacity. I didn’t have the presence of mind to clear the date with the people who manage my building, so it’s looking like it will be a mad dash on Monday morning to get the details ironed out.

I’m really pushing to get the work going in two weeks, when I have a good excuse not to be at home while they’re getting going and doing the demolition.

This has also been an interesting test of the project management stance of the system. With so many people and so many parts in motion, I can see how communication is vital. The architect managing my project suggested we have a weekly check-in meeting, and I’m beginning to see the value in that, to make sure information flows well between the group.

Feature image credit BOS |UA