Not sure what to ask a contractor before you hire them? These four questions tell you more than any portfolio will. They work whether you’re on site in Accra or watching from another continent, and they’re hard to answer well without real experience.
“Walk me through your last building, stage by stage.”
Ask them to go from substructure to finishes: excavation and foundations, blockwork and the structural frame, roofing, services, then plastering and fittings. A builder with real experience will talk about specific stages, the problems they hit, and the decisions they made. If the answer stays vague or jumps around, their experience may be thinner than the pitch suggested.
“Show me a foundation you poured, not just the finished house.”
Foundation work is invisible once the building goes up, which makes it the easiest place to cut corners. Photos of a finished house tell you nothing about it. A contractor who photographs the foundation stage, with the rebar in place and the formwork visible, is one who documents their own work. If all they have is the finished house, ask why.
“Who’s actually on site day to day, and is it you?”
The person who’s convincing on a call is often not the person running the site. A foreman or subcontractor may be there instead, and quality depends heavily on who that is. From abroad this gap is easy to miss. Ask who will be there each day, and ask to speak with that person before you commit.
“How do you handle a variation, and how do I approve it first?”
Site conditions differing from the drawings is normal, and it happens on almost every build. What matters is the process. A good contractor documents the change, prices it, and sends it to you for approval before work continues. A weak one just carries on, and you find out afterward, when it’s already built and already costing you. Ask how this works before you sign anything.
Ask with a plan in your hands
Each of these questions is easier to ask, and easier to judge, when you and the contractor are looking at the same drawing set. Browse the Shelterstack house plans from ₵1,250. To read the rest of the series, start with what distance changes when you build from abroad and how to vet a contractor you’ve never met.
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