I am Thomas Viruvelil,Architect and Management consultant by profession,interested in all forms of art.Living in Cochin,Kerala State of India designing and building houses in Kerala while being CEO of an Engineering organisation. I am using this blog to talk on my experiences of life in Kerala and my thoughts on any topic.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Your dream house in Kerala
One day a young lady came to my office without any advance information and caught hold of my hand unusual for a Kerala lady and said-“I am coming from New York.I want to build a house.Can we discuss about it?”
That is how design and construction of house at Irinjalakuda started.Problems with her in making her dream house were many.
1.She has nobody except a retired father in law to look after construction.Even he is quite new in the place where they plan to construct house and hence cannot do much about construction other than watching in silence.
2.Father in law has already located a local builder and made a plan of the house.She is not so confident about capability and trustworthiness of that builder.
3.Communicating with that local builder from USA will be a problem and for monitoring and observing progress of work,she will have to depend solely on telephonic reports from father in law
4.Even she or father in law is not aware of technicalities involved in construction and hence there is no way to monitor or ensure quality of construction.
5.Accounting for work done needs a proper transparent arrangement which the local builder cannot ensure.
6.Just by looking at plan of the house made,she is not able to make out how the house will come out when finished and what features and facilities the house will have.
in short she is simply searching for a reliable professional who can guide them properly,manage finance for construction reliably and someone who can be fully trusted to make her dream house a reality.
After completion of the house ,she told me that many NRI malayalees like her really want to buy land in Kerala and construct a dream house where they can come and stay for few days of their vacation and come back and stay after retirement if they come back to India or sell at a later date at a good price if they do not want to come back and settle in Kerala for retirement.
But she also told me that in spite of having money most of the NRIs are not daring to venture into buying land and constructing house in Kerala as they are not hopeful of finding some one reliable to make their dream house a reality.
We have been trying to become this non existent reliable professional group who will fully take care of converting your dream house into reality with communication through blogs and emails making you feel like seeing your dream house coming up right in front of your eyes sitting in any far away corner of the world.
We have done many projects like that.For a Delhi based person working with a MNC without time to come and monitor construction of house at Kalady,for Dubai based persons at Ranni and Nilambur, for Botswana based Engineer at Cochin,For USA based persons at Cochin and Perumbavoor and the list go on .
We have recently started construction of a house at Koratty.Husband is director of a pharmaceutical MNC based at Delhi travelling around the world and wife senior official of a foreign bank.Even though they are originally from Kerala,they were not having own land in Kerala and was nurturing a dream for a land and house in Kerala.
We have located land for their future house in Kerala.Did all documentation for land purchase,designed house,obtained building plan approval and now started construction.Sitting in any part of the world they can see pictures of work in progress of the house almost on daily basis through blog,communicate easily through emails and transfer funds through net and receive periodic bills also through net.
For doing all these,we are just billing clients practically on cost basis and quality of construction is strictly the best you can hope for with professional guidance and monitoring ensuring latest technology and best quality standards followed in each item and activity of construction.
Every house we design and build is normally offered for sale at almost double our billing amount by prospective buyers and we continuously get enquiries for purchase of houses which we have designed and built even though we always advice our clients not to sell the house as it will be practically impossible to get a similar house at the same cost.
Speciality of our design is that we have carefully chosen a unique style of design which always give a bigger and appealing external appearance for the house as every malayalee client hope for.At Irinjalakuda we were building a 4000 sft house when a film star was having a 6000 sft house nearby.Half jokingly my client asked me-“Is it possible for our house to look bigger than that house with lesser area?”
I said –Yes and I kept my word.House really looks different,big and unique in its appearance.A still better looking design with 1000 sft less in plinth area is coming up at Cherthala.
So we are improving and reaching new heights in architectural excellence,quality of construction,better communication with client and definitely much much more value for the hard earned money of our clients many of them living and working in different parts of the world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment