Respecting a deadline is something we all experienced, in this way or another, and know how stressful it can get. But respecting a time limit in construction? Now that is something that can easily circumvent your planned schedule and get prolonged, having you losing your money and nerves. When talking about building a vacation home that you would visit only few times a year, and not your main “nest”, it often happens that these “side projects” never even get finished.
There are some rules that you should abide by and catches to pay attention to:
- Know what awaits you before you set off into this kind of venture;
- Save yourself some money and time;
- Speed up the process of building your vacation home.
When you find a solid and financially agreeable contractor, he or she will set a building schedule (according to the specifics of your desired construction) and will set the pace that will best suit you, so you could have enough time to maneuver and bring necessary decisions. Make sure that the contractor’s schedule can work out at all, and make sure that you aren’t the one that might slow down the process. The more decisions that you can bring to the table before construction starts, the better, because there would be less back takes, reconsidering and changing of heart during the very process.
Of course, there are some common unpredictable situations that slow down your work – health, work and family problems (and, basically, everything that makes you shift your focus away from the construction) will divert you or obstruct the decision making process; budget overruns; changing your mind about product choices (maybe you’ve just seen a better built kitchen or living-room on the television); the desire for the latest products that are fresh on the market and hard to get hold of, or even not available (decisions regarding the purchase of these items should be brought early enough in order to avoid delays in shipping).
How to respect the deadline or even speed up the process, without loss of quality?
First of all, you can do a certain amount of work yourself. There are jobs that are not that hard to learn and do, and they’re to be found before as well as after the more massive construction projects. They are: painting, sanding and filing, then wiring (phones, Ethernet, cable), door and light fixtures, wallpapers and cleaning up. Technically, you could have professionals do it, but you could also have a couple of friends over for an active weekend.
Motivate the contractor and other important individuals in your project:
- If you have a good budget, then whenever there is an improvement in the building process, give small cash bonuses;
- If completed faster, see how much money you would save and offer some of the money to the contractor as a bonus. State this plan before the construction begins, and your men will certainly work faster towards an obvious bonus.
- Consult with your construction team, think of ways to get the project done faster that work for everybody involved. Reward the best ideas additionally.
However, that’s all manual labor. There are ways to get the process digitalized. Make your life easier with construction project management software – designed for those that don’t want to bother with leading a construction crew and learning through personal experience. If you are handy with technology, there are many advantages of using this kind of software. First of all, it is very cost effective and no other project management system can compete with the pricing model. Secondly, it is cloud based, which means that everything is available to you (documents, plans, receipts, etc) via cloud computing servers, online and within reach at any moment. Furthermore, using this software increases the security of your construction project and is uploaded and stored on Amazon’s s3 file storage which is not publicly or locally accessible.
Make sure to bring all the decisions you can before you even start your vacation home project. Also, bring them as often you can during the construction so to avoid leaving things to contractors or feeling pressured by anybody or anything. For your personal project, take the matter in your own hands.
