Amongst super prime locations, amazing views over London’s mesmerising skyline and beautiful parks, there are always ample opportunities to increase your properties value significantly beyond the building cost of a large, congested city. However, to achieve this, careful planning is required to mitigate the pitfalls of construction costs.
The most critical stage of pre-construction involves the coordination of your design team, obtaining planning consents and agreeing prices and terms of building contracts. Below we look at various things to consider when going through this process.
Have your consents ready for any extensions or sufficient changes to your property.
There may be a variety of consents required to carry out works to your property. While these do predominantly stay the same from council to council, they will vary in how efficiently the process is managed and the level of leniency. There also may be various restrictions on alterations you can make on your property if it is listed. See considerations before buying a listed building then planning for listed buildings for more details.
The top three consents that you should consider are:
Produce a pre-construction programme for your project
This is absolutely vital for anyone preparing building work projects and should include:
Manage your costs at tender stage
You must have a detailed preliminaries section (Bill of quantities or Scope of Works) in your tender documents to be able to correctly manage all costs.
These preliminaries will set out restrictions and working conditions that the contractors need to consider within their price including:
Bring together all professionals involved early on
I would advise to liaise with a project manager early on who has experience of similar projects to yours so as to draw on their knowledge. They will be used to the requirements, the council’s requirements and restrictions and will set the project up for success.
It is important to assemble the design team at an early stage too. You can draw on their contacts and their recommendations for other professionals including the main contractor. See things to consider before appointing a contractor for more details.
A typical design team would include:
Understand your contractors’ challenges
Your contractors will always be working under various logistical constraints. Various examples include:
Piperhill Construction pride ourselves in being qualified and experienced to undertake all aspects of work; from new build, basement construction, refurbishment and luxury interior fit out, through to fully integrated services and first class designer finishes. Whether working within design and build or traditional contracts, our unfailing aim is to satisfy all of our clients and their consultants requirements and to produce the highest quality finished project.
Please contact us on 0208 166 5607 if you wish to discuss a project.
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