Project Managers

[pulhamdown]

I have been reading the thread on MBC with great interest.  I have now been in our newbuild for almost five years.  I knew very little about building an energy efficient house beforehand.  Fortunately, I found a project manager reasonably locally, who helped design our systems, alter the spec of the timber frame, and supply most of the labour.  Without him, I could not have succeeded.  We did a lot of the work together, from laying drains, to remedying electrical issues, with me as the labourer.  He did cost a fair bit, but I reckon I saved most of his fees through clever purchasing decisions, and innovative thinking.  He researched purchases and sourced them, and I spent my evenings purchasing them on the internet.  We did not employ an architect, but used Scotframe for our timber frame.    Our two joiners, who were the main contractors, were told at the outset, that there would be an airtest at the end of the build.  Get it right, and that's your next reference.  They did, and very little supervision was required in terms of airtightness.  In short, if you have little experience in housebuilding, I would strongly recommend getting a good project manager.  I am certainly pleased I did, and have got the house I wanted.  

 

Colin 

Edited February 16, 2018 by pulhamdown
Typo

[ragg987]

Agree. I see effective Project Management as a neccessity, not a cost. Else you are risking the outcome of your £x00,000 investment either through missed opportunities, excess costs, poor quality or significant delays. I do not accept that a person without the knowledge can just step in and AND get it right.

 

Full-disclosure: my job it to PM in IT services, I sometimes come across organisations who try to give the PM role to some bod in the business, these are inevitably a disaster.

 

Then comes the question of how you provide that PM:

• the client - but only if you have the knowledge and time
• third party - either on the job as @pulhamdown or dedicated and probably part-time
• main contractor - in which case the contract should recognise that role

We had a third party PM from design onwards and until water-tight and I picked up the role from that point as we were in more familiar territory. Our PM was generally on the ball and proactive, so key to realising our dream.

[Jeremy Harris]

As said elsewhere, I really do think that the role of a good project manager is underestimated, and I also think that there are some peculiarities in the way that the building industry works that makes a significant difference to the way self-build project management needs to be approached, especially if not using a main contractor. 

 

I have a bit of project management experience, but that was managing major procurement programmes, and despite having all the relevant bits of paper (Prince 2, MSP etc) I was wholly unqualified to manage a self-build project.  We started out intending to use a project manager, and went so far as to engage with a local chap who assured us that he would almost certainly save his fee, both by cost savings and by resolving issues and bringing the project in on time.  There were many, many times when I've regretted the decision to not use him, a decision that was largely based on over-confidence on my part.

 

In our case, everything I'd read or heard suggested that the ground works were the most likely area to cause problems, and were the part of the job that carried the highest risk.  To mitigate that I wrote a ground works contract that effectively made the ground works company the main contractor for the first 6 week phase of the build.  There were a couple of relatively minor issues that arose, and one pretty serious issue that led to me seeking a reduction on the final stage payment, but when they were finished I realised there were some other errors that cost us a fair bit of money to sort out, like the site levels being way too high (no allowance, as per the drawings, for the topsoil needed to bring us back to the stipulated finished level), the access track that we paid over the odds for was unusable for anything other than a digger, so I had to rush around and hire a digger the day after they were off site to correct it, and much late I measured up for the drive and discovered that the garage foundation and treatment plant were not in the right place, both of which caused more hassle.

 

However, and this is the dangerous bit, at the time the ground works were completed I felt confident that I could manage the remainder.  What I failed to realise was that there was far more to managing building contractors than I believed, in particular the need to be pretty hands-on all the time.  In general we had a pretty good bunch of people working with us on the build, with only one really iffy contractor and a few that were worth their weight in gold.  Without the help and guidance I received from the best of them, I'd never have picked up some of the issues that arose, all of which were down to me not having enough knowledge about the details of building a house.

 

As project manager, you really have to have a pretty good understanding of these details, as it's inevitable that you will be asked last-minute questions and expected to just give the right answer!

[ragg987]

6 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

As project manager, you really have to have a pretty good understanding of these details

Yes, Prince 2 are about methodology, critical path, risk management, stakeholders etc. But of course to apply these methods you need to know a lot about the subject. They go hand-in-hand, you cannot have one and not the other to be effective at it.

[epsilonGreedy]

I am in the same position as @pulhamdown except I am at the start of my self build journey. My current idea is to have a wise-owl project manager operating in the background on my behalf. I envisage this project manager would be available for a few 20 minute telephone conversations per week or could visit the site during the evening to pass judgement on work in progress if I am concerned. For example I would attempt to produce a service and drainage plan myself, then pay him for 30 minutes onsite to pace out the plan to verify my thoughts. 

[Ferdinand]

@epsilonGreedy

 

'Wise-owl' is a good phrase. I shall steal it and stop talking about HOGs.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Ferdinand

[PeterW]

13 hours ago, epsilonGreedy said:

I am in the same position as @pulhamdown except I am at the start of my self build journey. My current idea is to have a wise-owl project manager operating in the background on my behalf. I envisage this project manager would be available for a few 20 minute telephone conversations per week or could visit the site during the evening to pass judgement on work in progress if I am concerned. For example I would attempt to produce a service and drainage plan myself, then pay him for 30 minutes onsite to pace out the plan to verify my thoughts. 

 

From knowledge of the market you may struggle to get that sort of input in the way you want, and would be better to engage a PM who is onsite to advise when the work is happening rather than after the fact and getting remediation action - the latter costs twice as much as the former as you pay to undo the work and pay to redo it. @recoveringacademic Has a few scars from this, and @Nickfromwales can also attest to how crap some subs can be. I found roofer’s to be a nightmare - 3 Velux in a row that were obviously not aligned and they had to redo but knew they were wrong - and that was down to lack of supervision. 

 

For clarity - I am the PM..!

 

What is key is a level of technical supervision and assistance / guidance that is above your comfort level to use as a sounding board and assurance role. For me that is my private building control inspector who is providing warranty and building regulations inspections but also available on the end of the phone or an email to provide clarity on what to do in certain situations where I’m not 100% sure. 

 

If you say to one of these companies - and there are many - that you want enhanced BRegs inspections then you will get just that. The hourly rate is about £60-70 from a bit of research but that excludes travel time for short site inspections. 

 

You have a sliding scale here on charges from probably 1-2% of build cost for the adhoc guidance to 10-12% for the fully managed by architect or PM. The choice is a pure risk vs cost based on your comfort level. 

[ToughButterCup]

20 minutes ago, PeterW said:

[...]

. @recoveringacademic Has a few scars from this, and @Nickfromwales can also attest to how crap some subs can be.

[...]

 

And this explains my mistake....

In short, lack of contacts.

[mvincentd]

3 hours ago, PeterW said:

What is key is a level of technical supervision and assistance / guidance that is above your comfort level to use as a sounding board and assurance role. For me that is my private building control inspector who is providing warranty and building regulations inspections but also available on the end of the phone or an email to provide clarity on what to do in certain situations where I’m not 100% sure. 

 

Yes, that scenario works better for me than an external project manager, ....and certainly on a cost/benefit basis.

 

Yes, it goes without saying that my build needs a project manager, but there's no reason why it can't be (inexperienced)me.  I want sufficient involvement in my project that I know and understand it inside out anyway, and i'm prepared to give it all my time.  If I was only going to 'visit' the project a couple of times a week it would be unthinkable to me not to use a main contractor who was effectively project managing it and replicating my level of understanding of the project as a whole....so why would I then add a project manager.

 

A project manager is like any other contractor....interested and committed in accordance with his remuneration.  My biggest problems are occurring at seemingly micro-detail on the drawings, missed by architectural technician, structural engineer and building regs.....so I don't believe an external  project manager would have spotted them prior to them becoming an on-the-ground problem either....unless i was paying him to be extremely inquisitive from early on.  I do believe his trouble shooting of them would be superior to mine but he'd still have to refer to the team of AT, SE & B'regs...so he wouldn't have fundamentally changed the situation but what help he brought would have been at great cost.

 

Don't get me wrong, i'm having huge difficulties with my build and have made horrible mistakes.  Self project managing won't be viable or palatable to everyone or suitable to every project but please lets not rule it out as something else best left to professionals along with almost everything apart from shopping for windows and floor finishes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

@mvincentd, you are far from alone, I think there are many of us here that have found ourselves in the same position.  My view is the same as yours, that I felt that my personal interest in things being done as they should be, and as we wanted them to be, made me more diligent than a professional may have been.  My problem was solely a lack of understanding of the way that the various building trades normally work, and particularly how they interact.  If I ever did this again I'd definitely be a lot better at it, but for many, perhaps most, self-builders it's a once in a lifetime project.