If you’re building a new house, do you need a project manager? What does the role entail? And how can they best manage everyone’s expectations of the build?
In this article we cover:
- What is a project manager
- Do you need a professional to take on the role
- What a project manager does exactly
- How they can save you money
- How to manage expectations on a building site
- Dealing with family dynamics
- Getting the best from professionals
The three major ‘ingredients’ when building a new home are Time, Cost and Quality. It’s an observable fact that we can usually attain only two of these. It is this dilemma that leads to so much conflict and disagreement among the stakeholders in a self-build. Y
ou and your partner, for example, may have different views on where this balance should lie… Cheap and Fast and don’t bother with the Quality? Quality and Cost rule everything, no matter how long it takes?
It’s vital to grasp these nettles very early on in your project. Be sure to listen to all the interested parties so they feel heard and understood. Your teenage kids, for example, may have some really good ideas on your whole project, and not just about their personal rooms.
Your neighbours, too, may contribute more than you think. And so on. Waterproofing yourself in this way at the start will pay dividends later.
Family dynamics
The trouble with building a dream home is that each person’s dreams are so different. They may not appear to be at the start but as the designs evolve and the budget becomes a reality, real life decisions have to be made and compromises sought.
This may bring out the worst in any underlying family rifts. Making everyone feel included is a great start. But you are the boss of the project and they have to understand that at some stage you, your views and your personal investment in the new home will have to rule the day. This will undoubtedly mean some parties feel ‘disadvantaged’, angry, disappointed and more.
But none of this is just a matter of being ‘nice’. It’ll come down to hard cash in the end and could even threaten the whole project. Builders are great at picking up on frictions between parties and can use these disagreements to play off one against another.
This, in turn, can drive up costs, sometimes catastrophically. The secret is to get everything agreed and locked down early so once your design is set in stone and the budgets agreed no one is allowed to rock the boat, apart from on small details.
It’s also helpful to keep everyone in the loop as the build progresses. At this stage many parties’ earlier concerns and gripes disappear as their worst fears vanish. Most families will never have embarked on such an adventure before and a fear of the unknown and any change in lifestyle can seem threatening.
Use your managerial skills to show just how great the project is turning out to be and you’ll keep your previous doubters not only on-side but enthusiastic. With love, empathic listening and care you should be able to keep most people happy most of the time.
Getting the best from professionals
Managing a self-build will involve many professionals. They’ll all be more expert than you in their own particular way, otherwise you wouldn’t be employing them. But they’ll all be vital, working as a team, to help you get your complex and expensive project done.
Apart from the obvious designer or architect you’ll also have to have a good accountant, a solicitor who knows about property, a ‘tame’ estate agent, possibly a planning consultant, possibly a quantity surveyor, your building control inspector (whom you may or may not see in ROI but definitely will in NI), your project manager, a source of cash (unless you are using your own) and a supportive partner (if you have one).
A crucial part of this team will, of course, be your builder but let’s leave him out for the moment.
Unlike many teams in normal workplaces your build team will be temporary (you won’t be with them two years from now); unproven (you may not have worked in this way with them before); fragile (they’ll at first have no corporate loyalty either to you or to your ‘brand’); and, before this project, might never have worked with one another before.
Your secret from day one is to create a ‘brand’ feeling to your build that makes your professionals feel a part of something which they then care about. To you, this build means everything. To them, it’s just another job, however pleasant, professionally competent and caring they may be.
A major challenge in a team like this is how to motivate people as you try to do something way harder than you’ve ever done while acknowledging that, for them, this is their bread and butter.
Balancing your lack of knowledge and understandable personal anxieties against their clear professional ‘superiority’ can be hard at first. You have your ‘dream’ and they take this dream into their hands. This can feel uncomfortable until you find your feet.
By listening and learning every day you’ll be able to build a humility that may feel unusual or strange to you, especially if you are used to managing people in other situations.
But alongside this humility you’ll need, paradoxically, to develop authority. And this will have to be earned. I find authority usually follows giving others the respect they deserve. Some subcontractors say they’ll put up with all kinds of poor management provided the money is good.
Other professionals say they won’t work for a difficult individual no matter what they are paid. As in all management situations you’ll need to discover sensitively who needs ‘stick’ and who ‘carrot’ to get the best out of them.
The more insight you have into yourself, the better a manager you’ll be. Praise and encouragement are often in short supply on building sites but are a great step to building trust as your professionals feel valued.
Most of all, don’t be afraid to show how passionate you are. This creates a sense of ownership that rubs off on your professionals and encourages them to go that extra mile for you.
Do I need a project manager?
It is perfectly possible to self-build without a project manager but if yours is anything other than totally straightforward, I’d suggest you employ. People often tell me they are competent managers and will be able to cope with a house build. But they are usually wrong.
Building a house, even with the help of a good architect, is very different from any other sort of management task you’ll have undertaken.
A house build is, in reality, a one-off factory, out of doors, with a workforce that will probably never have worked together before, all set against a fixed budget and hoped-for timeframe. This is all much more difficult to manage than you’d imagine.
And the construction world is a one-off. The possibilities for things to go wrong are endless. If something can come in the wrong colour, on the wrong day and the wrong size, believe me, it will.
Clients have told me they can’t imagine how I and other project managers cope with the inefficiencies, delays, poor materials, unreliable workforce and so on when running such an expensive project. Add to this the fact that you’ll probably want to change your mind as things go along. And someone will have to manage
all this change and the knock-on effects it produces.
Builders, too, are a world unto themselves. The main reason a builder gets up each day is to make a profit for his business. He is not a charity, however much he may like you and try to please you. This sometimes means his best interests are not yours. A project manager knows about everyone’s motivation and ways of working and can play this ‘orchestra’ so the end-result ‘sounds great’.
People often think that building a house simply involves getting a builder to do his job but, alas, this is often not the case… unless things are very simple. Most self-builders are picky, want what they want, have waited a long time to make their dream happen, and are intolerant – or worse – of things going wrong or costing too much.
Emotions can run high and, unless you are capable of standing back and taking an arm’s length view of these tricky matters, things can go pear-shaped very quickly as morale falls, costs soar and people even down tools. Many self-builders are too close to these problems to be able to manage them well.
A professional project manager will scope the work at the start and understand, in detail, what’s involved, plan what has to happen and when, plan the resources necessary to make everything happen, asses the risks in the system, deal with day-to-day problems, work harmoniously with the builder to deliver the project on time and on budget to a set of agreed end points.
Even those who have done a self-build before can often find this hard – and very time-consuming – to achieve
