I was exhibiting recently at the Home-building & Renovating Show at Sandown Park and met many potential Self-Builders. There seemed to be a common theme which was “what does a Project Manager actually do, how do I know that I need one, and how can I justify the cost?” Now, the majority of people considering embarking on a project; be it a complete house build,refurb/extend/conversion, using building contractor or sub-contractors, have this underlying feeling that they can man

So you have decided the scope of works, found the builder at the right cost and are going to protect yourself by placing him under contract. In theory, this is all going in the right direction, but there are banana skins that you need to consider. If you have specified everything completely, and are asking builder for a turn-key operation where he supplies everything, then to be fair the process should be reasonably straight forward. It’s just a case of using the correct cont

So you know what you are building, how much it will cost, and to a large extent how you are going to build it. What about “how long will it take”? The next logical task is to create a programme of works, and if you are employing a main contractor, whether under contract or not, such a document is imperative. If going down the main contractor route, by and large it is the responsibility of the builder to submit an agreeable programme, which forms part of the contract documents

When you first plan your build, you might be forgiven for assuming you can undertake the entire role of project manager yourself. But, with many of us negotiating modern life; balancing a full time career with caring for a family and maintaining some level social activity it can quickly become apparent that the role is far more demanding than we had anticipated and, that fitting it into the time we (don’t) have becomes near impossible. It is only with keeping a wary eye on ev