HI

[SRP]

Hi All

Thanks for accepting me to the forum ... it looks like a great source of advice and support.

We started looking for a plot to build a home a few weeks back expecting it to take a year or more, giving plenty of time for more research on the building bit ... and then ... we find a site with planning that looks great for us and have an offer accepted. It's not purchased until it's purchased, but so far so good.

 

We may pick up the architect who did the planning as the design is remarkably nearly there for us ... as we both work we are most likely going to pay them to project manage for us. I have seen a few posts on commissioning architects, negotiating fees, etc but if there are some good posts to point me to please link here and of course would welcome any thoughts/advice.

 

Thanks in advance for being here as we make what appears to be 1000s of decisions.

[Redoctober]

Hello and welcome to the forum. The way to get the best out of this site is to treat it as a two way street.

Where abouts are you building? Is the intended build a complex one? 

Keep us updated with progress and ask as many questions as you like.

Edited September 16, 2019 by Redoctober
Typo!

[nod]

Having a Architect Project manage for you is a very expensive route to take 

Commissioning a local builder would be far more cost effective 

Good look with your Purchase  

[Bitpipe]

7 minutes ago, nod said:

Having a Architect Project manage for you is a very expensive route to take 

Commissioning a local builder would be far more cost effective 

Good look with your Purchase  

 

Really depends what @SRP means by 'project manage' and how insulated / engaged they want to be in the build process.

 

It's a sliding scale of engagement really and there is no one size fits all model - very dependent on your attitude to budget, quality and time.

• Are you likely to be really stretching your budget, more or less comfortable with the costs with a buffer or are you awash with cash?
• Do you really care how things get done or will you have very specific ideas about detailing during all stages of the build?
• Can you be disturbed at all during the working day to take/make a call? Can you spend some of a lunchtime and evenings / weekends on the phone / internet? Can you work from home a few days a week or get to site ever?
• Does your build need to happen asap or can you take a bit more time (usually this depends on your accommodation situation while building, if you're living on site in a caravan then you're lest cost sensitive to overuns etc..)

You need to check with your architect just how hands on they would be as a PM - frequency of site visit, scope to make autonomous cost / quality based decisions etc.

 

You will need general site management also, opening, closing, taking deliveries, H&S etc.  

 

Then you need to decide how sub contractor / materials decisions are made. Do you want to approve? Leave it to general contractor? Have Architect manage tenders etc?

 

A general contractor will run your site and will hire in subs but they won't necessarily make great purchasing decisions for you or hunt for best prices / quality etc - they tend to stay in their comfort zone (usual subs, suppliers, decent credit etc) and if it's a fixed price deal, they will retain savings / absorb costs.

 

They will do things the way they usually do things so if you have some very specific requirements in design or quality (e.g. airtightness, shadow gapping etc..) then you will need someone to be more hands on with the delivery of those items.

 

PMing it yourself is potentially cheaper - depends how much time you can commit and how engaged you want to be with the decision making.

 

We both worked full time but I worked from home mostly during the build and we lived on site so was able to see what was happening few times a day but the majority of PM time was evenings and weekends to source materials & pricing. Needed to field occasional calls during the day for schedule trades & deliveries but if you want all decisions to be run by you then you'll have a similar level of disturbance.

 

We chose all subs and materials so saved 20-30% on the QS plan that was originally presented to us by a professional PM (plus his fee) i.e. to get the same quality (maybe) from a hands off turnkey single contractor would have probably added 20-30% to our budget. 

 

[nod]

Building a house is a very small project and quite easy to manage 

Engaging an Architect to deal with day to day trades ordering etc Would workout very expensive 

The cheapest option would be to organise trades yourself However if you don’t have the time or confidence to do this 

You are perhaps better looking at bringing in a local builder 

However if you go the TF route as many on here have You can simply bring trades in as needed 

 

I know a few have used PMs on here 

But I wonder what a pm would do all day on one house Unless you pay a tradesmen to do some of the work and manage others also 

Ive seen that work well on numerous small projects 

 

It’s easy to assume that an Architect will have his or her own team

Afraid not They simply phone around like everybody else and see who is available 

 

[Bitpipe]

1 hour ago, nod said:

However if you go the TF route as many on here have You can simply bring trades in as needed 

 

Good point - what made PM manageable for us was that contractor one did demolition, cart away, basement excavation, basement construction and all services and contractor two erected a timberframe, internal floors, walls and felted roof (then returned once windows & doors in to do insulation & airtightness). Had we not had a basement, they would have done raft foundation also (but not groundworks).

 

Including scaffold, that's 3 contractors to deal with initially, each onsite sequentially.

 

Window & door installation was one contractor, roofing was another and render a third - another 3 contractors - they worked more in parallel.

 

At that stage we had an airtight waterproof shell with internal floors and stud walls ready for first fix from plumbing and electrics (two more contractors) and then a joiner to make good for boarding and plastering (now up to 10 contractors).

 

Tiling, flooring, decorating and kitchen brings it up to 14 (may have missed one or two others), while that sounds like a lot, it was spread over 12 months. We did landscaping after moving in (another 3 contractors).

 

[nod]

What did it cost you for the pm management 

[SRP]

Thanks for the pointers on project management (PM).

Thankfully ... Budget isn't too much of a pressure, but like everyone we want value for money and for money to go on the things that matter (still being discussed) ... also as said above there is certainly a 'confidence issue' at this stage. Project is large - 1 to 2 houses with a seven figure cost.

 

I am certainly going to understand what an architect means by PM. From the comments I see that there are different elements of project management and first thoughts maybe I need a bit of architect handholding at the beginning to scope and set up what is needed and then when we move to site get local and main builder to take the day to day on.

 

Sorry to be so naive on such a budget. So impressed with so many of you taking this on yourselves.

[Jeremy Harris]

As a guide to the cost of a PM, I initially looked at using one.  I met a couple, either of whom I'd have happily used (our plans changed and I opted to PM myself).  In terms of cost, both were about the same, 10% to 12% of the build cost for a full PM service, including 1 site visit per week.  One of them suggested that he would probably be able to save the cost of his fee in the savings he'd be able to negotiate on materials, and offered to support that by passing on the contact details of previous customers for me to check.

[Bitpipe]

16 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

As a guide to the cost of a PM, I initially looked at using one.  I met a couple, either of whom I'd have happily used (our plans changed and I opted to PM myself).  In terms of cost, both were about the same, 10% to 12% of the build cost for a full PM service, including 1 site visit per week.  One of them suggested that he would probably be able to save the cost of his fee in the savings he'd be able to negotiate on materials, and offered to support that by passing on the contact details of previous customers for me to check.

 

Similar to me - I paid one an initial fee to build a detailed QS cost plan for ICF vs Timber Frame and carry out a PHPP analysis. 

 

His proposed fee was then 10% ish of the QS cost but he was confident that he'd bring it in under budget.

 

I did it myself, saved 20% on his budget plan with more aggressive pricing and also saved his fee...

 

Was easy enough, greatly helped by choosing a turnkey TF package  - had I done ICF with more contractors in the mix then maybe he would have been more useful - don't know.

[Jeremy Harris]

9 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

Was easy enough, greatly helped by choosing a turnkey TF package  - had I done ICF with more contractors in the mix then maybe he would have been more useful - don't know.

 

 

Pretty much exactly my experience.  The thing that convinced me to change my mind and project manage the build myself was opting for a very similar TF package as yours (minus the basement).  If we'd not chosen a supplier who could also install the foundations I'm not sure I'd have made the same decision, though, as the deciding factor was really that combined foundation and frame package, as it took away a lot of risk.

 

I opted to use a fairly tight, firm price contract for the ground works, and the ground works contractor used a QS to price everything up (and the QS gave me copies of all the costings).  I may have paid slightly more for this, but having what is often the most risky bit of the build on a firm price contract meant we were pretty sure that there's be no nasty surprises.  Once the frame was up and weathertight I found it pretty straightforward to either sub-contract out jobs I couldn't do, like plastering, or choose to do stuff myself.  The main area for us where things went badly wrong was drilling the borehole for the water supply, but I'm inclined to think that was just bad luck, in the main.  The borehole works fine now, but I now know more about drilling, hydrogeology, water treatment etc than I think I really need to...