6 Key Stages to a Stress Free Project

ABOVE: Caron Pain managed to complete her project in five months for just £110,000. Read more about this self-build...

Get Plans Designed Around Your Budget

The basic rule of not going over budget is to make sure your design can be realistically achieved according to your financial constraints. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But too few designers are experienced in being able to design to a budget, and if it’s not realistic from day one – before work has even started – you’re heading for disaster.

For too many self-builders and renovators, a ‘budget’ is simply something that is grasped out of the air and never really achievable, but it is absolutely essential that your project starts out on the right path.

An affordable design is the key to project success. While a big influence on how much a house will cost to build is its size, other factors play a significant part — the materials specification, the roof shape, the size of the windows, and so on.

So make sure your designer can prove to you that the design they have created is achievable for the budget you have given them. In many ways this is one of the big appeals of the self-build package companies — they can provide fully costed examples of homes exactly like the one you want to build, and seem to be able to link budget and design intricately.

Plan, Plan and Plan Again

The last time you really want to be making decisions about materials and design issues is during the construction phase of your project. Many self-build and renovation projects have months of ‘downtime’ early on — usually the period after you’ve bought the plot or renovation opportunity and are waiting for builders, the planning office and

Building Control. This, arguably, is the critical time in any project and certainly not the time to relax. Research the interior and exterior materials you want, and finalise the layouts of the bathrooms and the kitchen, along with your electrical circuits.

Think through everything carefully and take a second look at room dimensions. Almost everything you choose has an impact on something else — so be sure of your choices and communicate them effectively. Research can prove a really effective tool.

One Set of Plans

It sounds like such a simple thing but admin/organisation on a busy building site can be very difficult. Plans do occasionally get changed and it’s vital to make sure everyone involved has the same set. And that applies not just to people working ‘live’ on site — people you’ve got lined up are likely to be preparing to work off a set of their own plans. Make sure any updates are communicated across all your site contacts.

Check Deliveries Immediately

There’s only one thing worse than waiting weeks for a delivery and it being the wrong thing — it’s finding out that it’s wrong after someone has installed it. Plumbers, electricians and joiners may well have been waiting for the right bath, flooring, taps and sockets to show up for many weeks and often install something the same day it shows up. If you’re not there to make sure it’s exactly what you ordered (or you haven’t got someone checking it for you) then be prepared for difficulties should something go wrong. Things may get broken in transit – it happens – and you need to be able to handle these problems immediately if the project schedule isn’t going to suffer.

Confirming orders a week or so after they are made should help avoid problems, too.

Minimise the Unknowns

One of the ways to ensure a smooth project – both in terms of keeping to schedule and expected costs – is to maximise the amount of prior knowledge. An easy example is that if you haven’t researched your flooring costs very well, the amount you end up paying might be different to what you’re guessing.

The more ‘unknowns’ you can eliminate, the more chance you have of being on par with expectations.

This is why renovation projects in particular are incredibly difficult to cost. As you begin opening an old house up, you can never be really sure as to what you are going to have to deal with. Plus, renovation projects are often more incremental – “while you’re taking that wall down, let’s change the windows!” – and so costs, and schedules, begin to spiral.

New build projects suffer less from this problem but there is one area where existing conditions can impact massively on costs - the groundworks. The solution is to dig a handful of trial holes at points around the site that are near to where you are expecting to build your foundations. A small hole dug now will be able to tell you the make-up of the ground beneath your site. If it’s stable, then fine — you’ve spent £3-500 to make sure. If your inspection finds something different – for example, that the ground has been made up over the years and you’ll have to dig down, say, 3m to find something stable to build off, or that underneath a top layer of soil is solid rock – then the trial holes will let you know about it and help you address the problem (and the way it affects your budget) before work commences.

If you don’t want to commit to a trial hole survey (search under ‘Geomatics & Land Surveying’ at ricsfirms.com to find one) then you could always make contact with your local Building Control officer. Find the officer who will be dealing with your project and ask them, informally, if they can offer guidance. They may well have dealt with similar projects in your immediate area and could offer some useful (free) information.

Understand & Prioritise the Critical Paths

It pays to understand the key parts of the construction process in order to avoid any potentially damaging delays along the route.

Within any project – both homebuilding and renovating included – there are key tasks that need to be carried out in order for the rest of the project to continue. These are known as ‘critical path’ tasks. For example, in simple terms, you can’t build the walls of the house without first creating the foundations and a floor structure. So the groundworks is a critical path job. If the groundworkers are late, then it pushes back the whole schedule. Landscaping, on the other hand, is not a critical path task. It is not affected by any other tasks and nothing else is dependent upon it.

So when you are planning your project – whether taking on the role of project manager or leaving it to a main contractor – make sure that the key critical trades are lined up, and the key critical materials are ordered on time. Prioritise these, and get them scheduled correctly, and your chances of finishing on time are vastly improved.

“The key is attitude...”

Self-build expert Ann Watson shares her secrets

“Anyone embarking on a self-build project will need to understand the key elements of the build process. It is also more than helpful to have an idea about how individual stagesof the build can affect other elements of the project and, more importantly, which of these key processes are critical to one another.

“Some people go to great lengths to produce charts and critical path analysis to manage their projects, but for one-off builds I find it all very time-consuming. I prefer to produce a schedule of works, and from this I simply enter the details onto a large wall planner. This normally suffices for me. From this colour-coded planner I can see key dates for ordering materials and booking trades — I can then confirm them a week or so before and check the completion of works critical to the next phase.

“As a self-builder, you are attempting to pull together people and products, all with their own agendas and timescales. While good planning is in your control, the execution of that plan requires the time and effort of others, who may themselves have unexpected difficulties occur, and these difficulties may have an adverse effect on your plan. It happens — so what can you do about it?

“For me, however, the key element for successful project management is attitude. You can plan all you like but there are so many elements coming together that at some stage problems will inevitably occur. Going off at the deep end at suppliers, builders and tradesmen is not going to encourage them to help you out of a difficulty.”

Ann Watson is a property developer and project consultant whose book, The Fearless Self Builder, will be published in September. Email her at annie@developadream.com

Read about two stress-free self-builds...

Further Reading:

• How to Cope With an Extension Project
• How Fast Can You Build a House?
• How to Negotiate - Expert Advice