The Situation
A cooperative society was acquiring a hundred units in a mass housing scheme. The attraction was the price per unit, which improved with volume, and the show unit supported the case.
We inspected across the scheme rather than accepting the show unit as representative. The findings were consistent rather than scattered, which is the significant part.
- Plumbing installation failed on the same points in each unit sampled.
- Electrical wiring did not meet standard, in the same way, throughout.
- Materials fell below specification uniformly.
The cooperative did not proceed.
A defect that appears once is a workmanship failure and a defect that appears a hundred times is a decision about how the scheme was built. Volume pricing prices the units, and it does not price that decision. On any bulk purchase the show unit is the one the developer prepared for viewing, so it is the least useful unit in the scheme to inspect.