Overall: super strong construction crew, really poor communication and project management from office staff.
We brought in Alward Construction into our Berkeley, CA home remodel project in March 2018. Keith (founder) met with us several times, and painted a wonderful picture of how the project would unfold -- clear estimations of cost and timeline, weekly meetings with project management staff, clear lines of communication. Alward is more expensive than most -- you expect you're paying top dollar for great project management and customer service.
Unfortunately, as the project unfolded, most of these promises fell apart. Our master builder who was onsite every day was excellent. He and his crew pushed the project forward, with high quality work day after day. The office staff, however, proved repeatedly that they barely knew what was going on with the project, were defensive when asked simple questions, and repeatedly dropped the ball with regards to timelines, budgets, sequencing of work, and generally managing us, the clients.
The budgeting process was a total waste of time. We spent weeks trying to work with their estimators, who had a giant chip on their shoulders (maybe because we're young? maybe because we're in the tech industry?) and proved to be unable to grasp the basics of our project (ultimately a kitchen remodel and new windows/doors). They came back with wild estimates that were 2x-3x off from reality and what the project ultimately ended up costing.
It turns out that the project management staff were not really focused on project management. They were mostly focused on after-the-fact reporting of what the master builder was doing. This meant that we, as clients, had basically no visibility into what was happening, what the schedule would be, or what would be happening on a given day. We had dozens of emails with our project management confirming specifics ("please confirm these materials have been ordered" or "please confirm the flooring will happen after the cabinets") only to come home after a long day and see the exact opposite ultimately happened on-site (oftentimes at great expense).
You never hear of a remodel project that goes perfectly -- you expect things to take longer than expected, or cost more than expected, or to encounter some twists and turns. Our house is beautiful, and we thank the Alward builders for their fine craftsmanship. However, the last 4-5 months have gone comically wrong in ways that we never could have imagined. We've basically had to project manage everything ourselves, as the Alward office staff was disorganized, combative, unprofessional, and in the end caused us so much stress and cost overruns on a nearly daily basis that we took over management of the project ourselves.
