Traditional.

I keep the number of concurrent builds low on purpose. Being on the job is the entire value of hiring a builder rather than a broker.

The walk-through isn’t the end. There’s a punch list, and then there’s the first year, when a new house dries out and settles and reveals the things that only appear under real use. Nail pops, a door that needs adjusting, a grout line that wants attention. I expect those calls and I answer them. A builder who disappears at closing was never really building for you; he was building to hand something over.

Nothing gets covered that I wouldn’t be comfortable looking at in five years. If something needs to be redone, it gets redone before the drywall goes on.

Energy performance is mostly decided in the walls, not the equipment. Insulation that’s actually installed to its rated value rather than stuffed around wiring, an air barrier that’s continuous instead of theoretical, windows specified for the elevation they sit on, and ductwork inside conditioned space where it belongs. I run thermal scans on my jobs because a camera finds a gap that a walk-through never will. A house built tight and ventilated correctly is quieter, more comfortable in August, and cheaper to run for as long as it stands.

Every job has something go sideways. The difference is whether you find out from the builder or from an inspector.

That’s how Rick ran his jobs, and it’s how I run mine.

I price the site work honestly, including the parts nobody enjoys paying for. Dirt, drainage, drives and utilities are where the surprises live, and I’d rather put real numbers on them in month one.

The walk-through isn’t the end. There’s a punch list, and then there’s the first year, when a new house dries out and settles and reveals the things that only appear under real use. Nail pops, a door that needs adjusting, a grout line that wants attention. I expect those calls and I answer them. A builder who disappears at closing was never really building for you; he was building to hand something over.

The foundation is the part of your house you’ll never look at and never stop depending on. In this part of Texas the soil is heavy clay that swells when it rains and shrinks when it doesn’t, which means the slab is designed for movement rather than pretending movement won’t happen. That means real engineering, correct moisture conditioning before the pour, post-tension cable laid where the drawings say and not where it’s convenient, and drainage that carries water away from the perimeter for the life of the house. Skipping any of it saves money in month three and costs a great deal in year eight.

Access decides your framing schedule. If a concrete truck and a lumber delivery cannot both get in, the job runs at half speed and the trades stop taking your calls. On a tight infill lot that means staging deliveries; on acreage it means building a drive that can carry a loaded truck before anything else happens.