Scheduling your home renovation
Having an organised plan in place is key to completing your scheme on time and within budget, but how do you prepare it and what happens if things go off track? Emily Smith takes a closer look
Emily Smith advises on how to avoid potentially costly delays to your project by organising your tradespeople and materials deliveries to be on site at the right time
Every home building project is unique, but planning a renovation takes a different approach to when you’re constructing a new property from scratch – largely because you’re working on a pre-existing structure that already has its individual quirks in place. The trick to setting up a smooth project is understanding what needs to be done when, and keeping in communication with your trades when delays crop up. Here are some key things to remember when planning your schedule.
Be prepared
Look at the project as a whole and have a clear order of jobs written down. Think about whether it makes sense to tackle one room at a time (it could if you’re going to live in the house during the works). Or is the scale extensive enough that you need to take a whole house approach? This would probably be the case if you’re doing major structural updates and changing the plumbing and electrics throughout. Perhaps a middle ground would suit you better – ie doing a few sections of the house simultaneously because you’re running the same flooring in two rooms and the adjoining hallway, for instance.
The first thing to prioritise in your schedule are any jobs that will prevent further damage. Every building naturally deteriorates over time, but if a property has been empty for a while then it’s likely to need more than simply an aesthetic facelift. Addressing major structural issues, such as rotten rafters and damp issues, should be top of the list.
Other common problems to look out for include incorrectly specified products that were installed by previous owners and are actually damaging the building. One key example is where (now dated) plastic windows were fitted to replace original timber units without due consideration to lintels. This might have destabilised the walls, which would now need to be fixed.
Remember the house needs to be weathertight before you focus on internal works (they’ll be ruined if the building isn’t dry). So, if you want a snazzy span of glazed doors in your new kitchen-diner, schedule for these to be installed before the new kitchen cabinets go in. For a guide to the order in which things need to happen, see the box opposite.
Understand the work
We’ve highlighted the importance of this in past features in this series, but it’s always best to speak to professionals to establish how extensive individual tasks are likely to be. There’s no point in scheduling an electrician for a few days’ work only for them to turn around and tell you the house needs a full rewire, and the job is therefore much bigger (and more expensive) than you’d planned for.
Another trick to keeping things on schedule is to make sure you understand exactly what each trade needs from others and when. Once they’ve finished a section of their work, you should agree with them exactly when they’re going to be back on site and what jobs they expect to have been completed by the time they return.
Don’t forget that you’ll need to follow the Building
Regs. This could involve details that you hadn’t considered, such as fire doors and a sprinkler system as part of a loft conversion. This is just another example of why speaking to the right experts and possibly to building control in advance of doing the work is crucial – you don’t want to have to undo things because they aren’t up to scratch.
Accept that stuff will happen
In a renovation, you’re dealing with an old building that can throw up problems nobody was expecting. Plus, every major project is at the mercy of notorious UK weather. Be prepared for things to end up taking longer than planned.
The homeowners featured in our real-life readers’ stories often highlight that delays from one trade have ricocheted onto the next, leaving them frustrated if the next contractor can’t be on site when needed because they’ve got other work on. What we can learn here is to understand the lead times for trades’ availability at the same time as estimating the project scope and how long jobs will take. It’s fundamental to communicate with the
people working on your home, especially if timings change. Most contractors understand that things happen, so will try to build some contingency into their schedule.
Delays are common and not always an individual’s fault, so don’t go pointing the finger until you understand the full story. For example, bad weather is something that’s difficult to account for in advance. Perhaps that means you can’t get the foundations for your extension completed because it’s been raining for weeks, for instance. This is annoying because it will have a knock on effect for your entire future schedule, but it’s also no one’s fault; you just have to stay calm and progress when you can. Saying that, a bit of seasonality sense can be factored into your plans – if you’re digging in January you’re likely to face more problems than if you’re doing the same job in June.
Work around lead times
Ensuring that materials arrive at the right time is another key priority. Take windows for example – on the one hand they’re chunky items, so it’s tough to find space to store them on site if they’re delivered before they can be fitted; on the other, lots of other jobs can’t be finished until they’re in place, so if they arrive too late it’ll definitely impact your schedule. This issue is notorious for holding up projects, so get your timings right and make sure the manufacturer can supply the units exactly when you need them.
Lead times are important with any product – some take longer to manufacture than others, or just aren’t held in stock, so be aware of these things when you’re specifying. Remember that bespoke items always take longer to produce than standard sized, off-the-shelf products. So understand the supplier’s processing time, from purchase to delivery, and be aware that some components might actually have to be ordered months before you need them.
Reacting to changes
A project schedule is a live beast, especially when it comes to a renovation. So keep in mind that, regardless of how organised you are, things will crop up along the way – and that’s because every time one trade is delayed by a day, or something hasn’t been delivered exactly when you need it, that has a knock on effect for everything else. You might be able to tighten things up to get back on track, but you could face another delay, for instance, when the next trade isn’t available for two weeks. Basically, prepare to be flexible as well as trying to stick to the schedule.
Some people like to use organisers such as gantt charts, which is a project planning spreadsheet. These allow you to set out how much time the various phases will take and what specific works need to be done when. They can be good, but as things start to shift you need to stay on top of rearranging your notes, otherwise you’ll just get frustrated with future delays. It’s also important to share keep other trades in the loop – if you haven’t let them know that the schedule is slipping significantly, you’ll soon be in trouble.
What’s important is that you use scheduling tools properly, listen to people on your site and keep on top of communication – and that’s as vital at the project planning stage as when things are progressing on site.