The culture bar

We had a good moment frame erection (yes, that's the proper term) today on our garage project. This is a design-build project of ours, and my wife Robyn was out there with me today, setting HSS5x5 columns ahead of the C10 beam arrival. Everything went smoothly, except for one little glitch: our concrete frost walls were a little weak, and we had a partial crack develop around one threaded anchor. We know how to fix this, and will, but what irks me is that our concrete sub poured such bad concrete. Part of this is my fault. I let him put way too much water in the mix, and I shouldn't have. But when you are on a pour with an old curmudgeon in charge, your options are limited. I had hoped we would be OK, and in the end I have to pay for the mistake by spending an hour or so correcting the cracked area.
The lesson here is that the construction culture of a region dictates the probable quality level of work one can cajole out of subs, and in this area of Maine, good concrete work is not a part of the culture. The corollary to this is, it's difficult to come from an area of really good concrete culture to an area of really bad concrete culture without getting frustrated. Is there an opportunity here? Probably.