Thought I should join this forum as I am planning my first new build in Northern Ireland. Happy to learn from others going through the process. Any top tips are welcome.

Hello Gregor, good to see another one doing it in NI. You will probably hear from just about everyone in the biz here (NI) 'are you mad?' Many have locked up self build sites, stopped at foundations or when it got watertight till next year. If you are just at the planning stage hopefully the situation will have eased by the time you get planning permission through. I was speaking to a neighbour/builder the other day, he said in a month the cost of foundations he was doing in Coleraine went up by 20k. He said it's hard to get workers, there are few men working here,  most are in London or Dublin, the big sites are pulling them in to get jobs wound up before the recession hits. They expect everything to go belly up next year and then hopefully prices will fall. Supplies are a problem too, the builder suppliers are very slow but their stock is sporadic. Price differences between them can be quite wild too. He said it's crazy getting quotes for the whole job now because it will be at the top of the market. Best to phase it if you insist on going ahead. 

Today of course I am waiting for our quotes,😒 overhead cables should be down in a week so in theory we could start demo anytime after that.  I am totally green with all of this so I come on here a lot and read old threads to try and understand it. Occasionally I put on questions and I feel like a 5 year old asking the adults. Luckily the people on here are very patient and tolerant.  They also seem to know between them just about everything and can be very helpful with saving money, time and sanity.

Also re tips, probably best to not mention or show the actual location, it just means you can ask whatever you want without comeback locally.