My ideal builder

[IR35 Avoider]

My ideal house would be a "Huf Haus", and the company would be my ideal builders to.

The reason I'm posting is a blog comment by someone who had one built in Switerland, part of which made me laugh out loud.

they 'apologised' for not being able, in March 2003, to give us an exact handover time - '2nd October, to be sure, but not sure whether it will be morning or afternoon.'!!

Finally, all faith in German efficiency was shattered - we were summoned for the ceremony on 1st October at 2 p.m. (24 hours early, if you please!), only to be met by the site supervisor, almost in tears, as 'the cleaning is not finished, can you come back at 4?'

[Gonzo]

My ideal house would be a "Huf Haus", and the company would be my ideal builders to.

The reason I'm posting is a blog comment by someone who had one built in Switerland, part of which made me laugh out loud.

They showed one of these being built on the Grand Designs show on Channel 4 a while back. The efficiency of the build was something to marvel at.

[NoddY]

When questioned about expansion, 'going public' etc. on TV a while back, one of the firms family members said: [paraphrased] "No, we prefer to concentrate on maintaining quality, by keeping small allows us to do this".

How often do you hear that?

[DaveB]

They showed one of these being built on the Grand Designs show on Channel 4 a while back. The efficiency of the build was something to marvel at.

As opposed to the efficiency of the dozy british crane crew brought in to do the heavy lifting.

Germans came hundreds of miles across at least two countries and arrived bang on time with truckloads of gear. The Brits with the crane had to come from the next county, were almost a day late and got lost on the way.

[Flubster]

Remind me again, how did we win the war?

Cos we were the goodies and they were the baddies.

[sasguru]

Remind me again, how did we win the war?

We didn't. America and Russia did.

HTH

[daviejones]

We had bigger arrows than the indians.....

[lukemg]

I remember seeing this. The house was incredibly good but the German workers were astonishing. Attention to detail, work ethic through the whole team, absolute refusal to miss the incredibly short deadline and they cleaned the van top-to-toe before considering they had finished.
Immense contrast to the surly, feckless brits involved in the project, had to be chivvied along constantly in-between stretching out tea, fag and grub breaks.
No surprise to me that the Germans still have a stunning manufacturing base to support their service industries. The odd sniping about the German economy totally misses the point that they have integrated a third world country into their own. Easy for us to forget our own shortcomings which are propped up by the financial hub we find ourselves at the centre of (think on when slagging off city bonuses, the city is the reason we can balance trade deficits etc) and the money from energy resources we have relied on for decades.
As for the war, regardless of the rights and wrongs (decided as ever by the victor) only the fact that they were fighting the whole planet and were essentially worn down by the scale of allies production swung the balance and it was touch and go even with that for a while (thanks for russian winters). Sure they and the country are not perfect by any means but I reckon they have some good stuff going on over there.