Home Builder's Planning & Management Guide
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PLANNING The Planning phase is one of the most important stages you will encounter. Treating this phase very seriously will help you stay on track towards your goal of a successful building program. There are many aspects to the planning of your house construction; I will briefly cover some of the more important of these aspects. You should consider the following to help you get organized: Establishing a realistic budget, and adhering to this budget, is the most important element of home-building planning and management. Determining the amount of money you can afford to spend, obtaining this money, and spending or releasing the money properly will be an important factor as to the success or failure of your building project. Your ability to establish a budget and your ability to manage this budget will insure that you have sufficient funds to complete your house construction. Without sufficient funds you may encounter liens from unpaid subcontractors, lawsuits, an unfinished house or bankruptcy. The budget will dictate or affect the style, location and scheduling aspects of the planning phase. Remember, in the planning phase you can modify the house style, look at a different location or change a schedule without incurring any financial loss. Once you have committed to a budget and subsequent loan amount, you are committed, and you may suffer financial consequences if the budget, planning or management is not carried out properly. Many professionals in the building business may feel that establishing a schedule should be considered first, or determine your house style first, etc. All of the components of the planning are important and are very much interrelated. However, by establishing the schedule first, you may be unrealistically pressured into making premature decisions that can hurt you in the long term. For example; you may initially establish a schedule to be moved into your new house in 4 months. By fixing this schedule you may not spend enough time planning your house, seeking a good builder, or delaying a part of the construction when necessary to insure that you are getting what you are paying for. COST CONTROL You now have all of your suppliers and subcontractors selected and contracted. You know what their prices are, you have compared the prices to your final budget, your lender has committed the funds; you are now ready to start building. The next step is to develop controls to insure that your funds do not run out before you have completed the building of your house. A cost control system is a provision for controlling your costs by comparing and monitoring current cost against individual budget items as well as the total budget amount. To begin the cost control system we will first separate the final budget into different categories. for convenience, the budget categories can be based on the specification categories that you have previously developed. List each of the categories and then assign a budget amount to each individual category. The total of all the category budget items will equal the total budget amount for the construction of your house. Let us assume that your total budget for the house construction is $100,000. Take the total budget amount from the price comparison analysis you previously completed and itemize each category (the category list is from your specifications): Please note that this budget is only intended as an example and in no way is it intended to reflect what any individual item or relationship of items should be. Do not use these budget amounts for your own specific budget.
1. Establish a budget as to how much you can afford for the house
2. Establish a style house that you desire
3. Establish a location where you want to live
4. Establish a schedule
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About the Book
Homebuilder's Planning & Management Guide
The book is aimed at helping the first time homebuilder who wants to be manager of his/her own building process. This guide will show you how to be in charge and how to successfully complete the home building project. As a guide, it is intended to help you through the various phases of planning and managing your home building project. Many of the author's clients have paid hundreds of dollars to be counseled in the concepts and suggestions put forward in this book.
There are some advantages to constructing the house yourself. One advantage is that you, as the builder, will develop a house that you feel represents your lifestyle, your dream and your personality. Another advantage, is that you have the potential to save a substantial amount of money. By following these basic concepts, you can also save money from unintended or hidden costs that often occur during the building process.
Each of the topics covered, is intended to make you aware of the building process, what it consists of and how everything is interrelated. It is not the intention of this book to try and make you a home-building expert. There are many books written on each individual topic, as well as many educational courses, in order for one to prepare to be an expert.
What this book will do for you, is make you aware of the building process and aware of the questions you must ask of those people associated with this business, those people with whom you will have to work.
If you are not in the business of building or construction, there are certain procedures for planning and building a house that you should learn. The book will review these procedures with you. You should be prepared to plan out your house thoroughly, or you may find out (too late) that the house you ultimately end up with is not really the house you thought you were getting. Due to inadequate planning and control, you may also find that the final cost of the house has far exceeded your original budget.
Building your own house can be a rewarding experience from both a personal achievement and from money saving considerations. Follow the guidelines and suggestions in this book and you will potentially save many thousands of dollars while building your home.
Good luck and enjoy your new home for many years to come.
About the Author
Edward J. Coppola has been associated with the design and construction industry for over thirty years. He has a degree in civil engineering and is licensed as a professional engineer in the states of Connecticut and Maine. For the past twelve years, he has maintained a consulting engineering practice located in Killingworth, Connecticut. During this time, he has counseled many people on how to purchase land and how to plan and manage their homebuilding program. During his career, he has designed and/or been associated with the construction of over 3,000 residential units, as well as numerous industrial and commercial projects. This experience also included responsibility for construction management, ensuring that the projects were planned, budgeted and controlled successfully. He is considered an expert in planning, design and development of residential projects.