Builders don't work at the speed of the information age

If you're like me, you're quite used to communications, decisions, and so on at the speed of email or even faster.  Many of us are on the down-side of using email for communication and many have moved on to other forms like twitter or facebook in place of some communication you previously used.

Builders don't seem to be like this.  At least not the ones I have bidding on my house.

Out of the 5 builders I have contacted, 3 of them have asked for my house plan in physical form, either handing it to them or sending it via snail mail.  I can't tell you the last time I actually put something in snail mail.  The files are too large to send via email, the attachment ends up somewhere around 80MB.  So I decided to use Dropbox to get the files in downloadable form.  However, none of the builders have, so far been able to open them even though I seem to have no trouble at all.  I can't tell if this is lack of technical proficiency or the file simply doesn't transfer to their computer correctly or some other real technical problem.  It's been 3 weeks now and I still have no quotes from these builders because of going round and round with issues like this or vacations or my own busy schedule.  I had hoped to be building the house a month ago and the last time I adjusted the schedule we can't even hope to start before the middle of June.

Another issue is, each of these builders seem to check their e-mail once a day.  As a programmer, my life is spent sitting in front of my computer which notifies me when I have a new message.  Then, on the rare occasions when I'm not sitting there, I have my blackberry with me all the time, so I am unfamiliar with what it is like to be so disconnected that a mistake or a technical failure caused a full day or maybe even more of delay time.

For my discovery of the week, as I was reading through the regulations on doing it yourself for electrical, I found that if you want to do your own, in most cases  you can but you are liable if the wiring in the house starts a fire even if you don't live there anymore.  I don't know the details of that; I'd love for a lawyer to give me more, but that seems like garbage if the building inspector has passed the job.  A change as small as a nail that is two long in the wrong spot could cause a short and a fire which should not be my fault.  What is the point of building codes and inspections if you are going to be treated differently by ever bank, realtor, and legal authority down the road even though you may have done something exactly the same as a licensed electrician?