Stay sane while enjoying your build.
Nicky Bryden, CLPM Director, has seen all manner of building excitements during the past seven years. Being at the helm of ClearPlan project management with her husband, James and now as part of CLPM. In this blog, Nicky offers some sage advice for those who are about to embark on a new building project.
“The process of renovating, extending or building your own home is exciting. It is challenging and rewarding but there are bound to be times when it can be exhausting, stressful and worrying.
Nicky talks ‘Stay sane while enjoying your build’ .These are her top sanity saving tips!
1. Dream the same dream…
Make sure you understand each other’s expectations in terms of design, budgets, the risk you’re prepared to take personally and also the way you would like the process to run. Are you willing to give up weekend and evening time to go through all of the details of the project once it starts? Do you feel confident about your level of expertise to deal quickly and efficiently with problems that bubble up? How do you feel about negotiating and dealing with builders and other contractors in your home?
“My husband and I played good cop and bad cop with our builder. I was at home all day and my husband was at work. I would see something on site that I wasn’t happy with and found that my husband was more effective at dealing with the contractors than I was. However, I had to accept that given his work patterns, there were sometimes compromises and delays. If we had had a project manager, this would have eliminated this problem.”
Mrs B, Hertfordshire
2. It’s all about the money…
The devil really is in the detail with budgets. The more detailed the plans, the more accurate the estimates. We know that sometimes home owners feel uncomfortable discussing money with their builders, feeling that the power is all in the contractors hands and everything costs £1,000 for this and £1,00 for that or £1,000 just to walk on site! If you also find it hard to talk money, consider using a project manager to administrate your building contract. It can really reduce the stress on your home life.
3. Top Cat?
It’s simple to say, but we encourage anyone embarking on a project on their own to have a very clear decision making process. Without clarity, some contractors will assume it is the person who they see most, some will assume it is the person who appears to hold the purse strings. Either way, you want to avoid any obstruction to making quick decisions. Time is money as they say and a project manager, particularly one who is local to your project, can be on site weekly (or more often if required) which facilitates speedy decisions.
ClearPlan sends out monthly and weekly progress reports to all of our customers which we find to be one of the best ways of keeping everyone up to date. We’re also only a phone call away!
4. Your time starts… now
There will be times during the build when decisions have to be made very quickly. Some of them can be planned for and we always recommend having answers to common questions “what type of tiles are you having? What colour is your front door going to be?”
With the best will in the world in the middle of a long project, clients can sometimes get “project fatigue”; the grinding weekly visits to the building sites, the inconvenience of living in rented accommodation.
If you employ a project manager, they will guide you through these decisions in a timely fashion so you don’t “act in haste and repent at leisure”.
5. Easy does it…
I often advise my clients to find ways of relieving pressure. Sure, with an expensive build to finance, going on holiday or just going out for a good meal may seem an unnecessary extravagance but don’t be so hard on yourself! We know that when you’re living with constant dust, trying to get children to focus on homework and making sure the toddler doesn’t jump in a newly dug foundation there’s a lot of strain to absorb.
At ClearPlan, our clients had a single, named project manager who almost becomes part of the family. We pride ourselves on our personal service no detail to small and no project to large.” CLPM have followed suit.
Who are CLPM
CLPM are experts in all types of construction methods and projects. If you need budgeting or quantity surveying advice we have services to suit everyone. We are also keen to promote sustainable building, and have a heating and energy consultancy. For more details on our other services please visit our website and browse our offer.
If you are planning a new build, or have a home renovation project then do get in touch. See how we can help you. Call 01923 896550, email info@cl-m.com or complete a contact form.
Stay sane while enjoying your build.
