Sunday, March 10, 2013

Self Build Planning & Control

By Tim Karpinski


You could be conversant with the benefits of a self build house. It will enable you to have a customized home that meets your wishes and specifications rather than having an 'off the shelf ' house from a developer. For the details about the advantages and what you've got to do there's a wealth of self build informationin the Vision Development blog.

Let's assume that you've got a budget for the project and have a desired timescale for completion. How are you going to complete your self build house project within time and budget?

You need to use the calculator on our website to help work out the budget for your project. This should be done by building a spreadsheet for each task or purchase in the project. You need to add on a contingency (say 10%) to cover cost overruns and unexpected costs. As you begin to work with an architect or designer then you'll start to refine your budget. The accuracy of your costing will improve as you replace first estimates with real quotations from suppliers and building trades.

One technique of controlling self build costs as the self build project progresses is to track work finished and actual spend for each task or purchase on a spreadsheet. You can estimate completion percentage and record this and also enter stage payments to suppliers and contractors. This will allow you to compare how much has actually been spent to the part of the budget for the work which has been completed. In the spreadsheet you would be in a position to sum the finished budgets and actual spend across the entire project to permit you to compare what has been actually spent against what should have been spent when taking a look at real and reckoned completion of jobs and purchases.

Additionally , you should track the completion of the various jobs and purchases against a schedule. When you have finished the costing spreadsheet you must prepare a plan showing the start and finish date for each task. This can also be done as a spreadsheet. You can blend the data of the plan and the cost spreadsheet and this may give you an indicator of how spend will be phased over the self build project. This is very helpful if you want to have drawdown financing arrangements from a mortgage provider. You need to also monitor actual completion of tasks against the plan.




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