Yay - Construction Certificate 20-05-10

I received the long awaited call this morning to say the construction certificate has been received by the costing department. The tender is up by $440 from the last one in March due to Council requiring some other report since they gave conditional DA and this report meets that condition.
On Monday afternoon we have an appointment to sign off on the fixed price contract and then we are underway people! This puts the completion date at approximately 6 September 2010.

Mid-May and where are we at?

Well we are approaching the final hurdles before building commences. Right now I feel like Homer Simpson climbing Mt Springfield, I reach a peak and cheer, but then I look down and look up and realise how much further there is to go - D'oh!
So what are the final hurdles. Today I spoke to our Customer Service chick, who isn't much chop I realise as last week she said she would find out why the engineer's report hadn't been received and let me know when it was expected and when it was anticipated to go to Council and then the Construction Certificate be prepared. Well, she didn't. So I rang her this morning, and yes the CC is being prepared and we will be called in once it is available to come into Allworth Parramatta office to sign off on the fixed price contract. And no, weekend appointments are not available, appointments are Monday to Friday at 9.30am, 11am or 2.30pm.
I think if I haven't heard from her by Thursday morning I'll call her up because as I realised last week, the ER should have been due mid-week and the CC one week later, so by my calculations, on Wednesday the CC should be in their hot little hands.

My Uncle and Aunt were also over on the weekend and we were talking about all of this and in particular if we could turn back time would we go with Allworth again, and really, maybe yes. For our price range, being in total $215k for the house (4 bed + study), landscaping and some internal dressing, there were very few options. Allworth is in fact including a pretty good extras package, have one of the quickest build times both according to their promise and what we have heard, and I found the website user friendly - I really loathe having to download a plan to view it. Huxley homes might have got a look in if the website had have been easier because their staff we really great to talk to at Kellyville, but Allworth's main appeal was the promise of speed.
That's why this really has been a let-down. So what I think is important is about having a good sense of how much time things will take and having confidence that the builder has built in the area and has a good understanding of the Council's requirements.

Really, Camden Council had a fantastic turnover time, which you can monitor by typing your suburb in and looking at similar applications in your area, so for example I knew that Spring Farm single stories were taking no more than three weeks. But had Allworth complied with Council guidelines we probably would have had DA back in January. But instead we were arguing whether to put in an application for non-compliance or to change the design and start from scratch, so we went through the original process twice in fact. If we hadn't, yeah I think I might be sitting in my new family room right now as Allworth has built a similar design in Spring Farm over in the Cornish side and those people have moved in about three weeks ago now (yes it pays to ask to get addresses to see your design being built - they won't give you an address after the people have moved in though).

So fingers crossed for a dry Winter now, as I still have my sights set on signing off early next week at which time 20 days starts to count down. Should be a June start then. But I guess the good news is I will be establishing a garden come Spring.

Geotech report requested

Last week, just to make things a little more muddy, I received a call from the CSO, apparently considering she's never sent an email or snail mail before. This woman advised me that according to some condition on the title that DA was received subject to compliance with this condition. This condition is that the foundation be built according to a Geotech Report.

What's a Geotech Report? Well buggered if she could tell me except to say that its an assessment of the local conditions and determines how the foundations are prepared. What I found out from the WWW is 'the geotechnical report is the tool used to communicate the site conditions and design and construction recommendations'. So now with both explanations in hand I understand better what she meant. And the only thing I can gather is the reason why it is needed is because that is what is said on the conditions of title.

What the CSO did say is that Council will probably allow access to read only but that makes it difficult as the Engineer won't have it on hand when designing the foundations. Council will apparently claim something under the privacy legislation to prevent a photocopy being taken, as the GR is submitted with the application for subdivision but it has something to do with limiting their liability if the GR is relied upon. And yes well of course it will be relied upon, that is the whole point of this exercise.

So I decided not to call Council and just circumvent the middleman as much as possible and I call Mirvac. Mirvac is happy to give us one, when they receive a written request from my Solicitor to theirs. Right, so I get to fork out probably another $50 for my Solicitor's assistant to write up something to the effect of "My client purchased land from you and in order to commence building needs the Geotech Report as submitted to council and referred to under Condition 3 of the title. My client has been unable to procure a copy of said report from Council. We request that you please forward said report urgently. Regards, etc."

Genius, couldn't be happier. So another week has passed since DA received and now we are waiting on the GR, and then it will still be a week or so to the Engineer's report is ready then another week for the Construction Certificate. Awesome...