Are we mad to project manage ourselves?

[Dave Jones]

Due to your lack of knowledge the only things you can check are cosmetic. Pretty much same as building control!

 

When a mistake raises its head it will be much harder to sort as you didn't know it was a mistake at the time.  Some of these mistakes will be cheap to sort some wont.

 

You are rolling the dice on having good trades who give a shit and are still willing to go out of their way after you have screwed them down as much as you can on price.

 

Have a pool of cash to cover these (10-20% of total build cost), don't blame the builder and crack on!

[Blooda]

15 hours ago, Adsibob said:

Worth also weighing up how much you will need to spend on therapy to deal with the stress from PMing.

We also grossly underestimated the cost of take-aways  

[Carrerahill]

21 hours ago, Thorfun said:

...BCO will check that stuff and what they don't check you'll pick up on pretty quickly.

 

I wouldn't count on that.

 

BCO turned up at the end of my builds, have not shown up yet for my parents build (its just internal fit out to do now) and they are really only looking at a finished stages, there is plenty room for stuff to get fudged and the BCO would never know. 

 

I recently went to do the electrical snagging visit of a commercial building I did the design for, my colleague doing the mechanical where he found issues, this building had been signed off by a major cities BC department, things I pulled the contractor up on were, no interface units on door access control units with the fire alarm, so on alarm none of the doors automatically released, emergency lighting not working, it was even flashing the charge indicator red, missing covers on panel boards and DB's, no labelling and in some instances the ON-OFF stickers were reversed so it looked like things were in the off position when in fact they were on, fire exit signs missing or installed incorrectly, inadequate cable support or saddles on conduit - I will not list them all, however, my point is, you cannot count on BCO to check and snag your build.

Edited December 2, 2022 by Carrerahill

[saveasteading]

16 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

Also equate the pleasure / self satisfaction you may get

That is becoming a difficult formula. 

 

9 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Ask yourself what you don’t know

And then allow for what you don't know you don't know.

 

I would just add that being onsite every day gives you control, insight and some leverage. You may save many weeks. Plus, depending on disposition, you can do little jobs, hold things for the builders, and move things along.

A lot of time is lost when the builder is short of something....sometimes an excuse for a part day. You can go for the missing grommet.

 

But remember that most of us on here have experience. It is probably more difficult than we are saying, or even aware.

[Nickfromwales]

3 hours ago, saveasteading said:

And then allow for what you don't know you don't know.

Ahem, reverend 👊😎👌

[SarahG]

On 02/12/2022 at 16:47, saveasteading said:

On 02/12/2022 at 07:19, Nickfromwales said:

 

And then allow for what you don't know you don't know.

Yes exactly!

 

Great feedback and very helpful, thanks everyone.

 

Going back to my original question if we are mad to PM ourselves, I think the answer is probably yes! And do we want to do something mad, probably not (at the moment at least).

 

I would love to have the time to just crack on and do it all ourselves at our own pace. However, we want to get this build done reasonably quickly and we have designed it with simplicity in mind (rather than a dream house). All we really want is a decent family home to last us the next 10 years. Perhaps if this goes well we might look to do something in the future which is a bit more adventurous and PM ourselves.