002–4 wkBefore anyone is appointed
The conversation you are having right now
You’ve got a site, a scheme on paper and a funder asking for dates. What you haven’t got is one place where the dates, the money and the decisions are written down together. That is the whole of this job, and the rest of this page is the shape it takes.
- Who holds the programme?
- We do, and one copy of it is live at any moment. The consultant team works to the dates in that copy, and nobody issues a second version off the back of a meeting. When a date moves, it moves in the master programme first and in everyone’s diary second. You’ll always be able to name the person who moved it and the note that authorised the move.
- Do you design the building?
- No. The architect designs it and the engineers make it stand up. We appoint them, brief them, hold them to dates, and read what they issue against the cost plan. Keeping the drawing hand and the managing hand apart is the point of the arrangement. Either way, every drawing that goes out is a drawing you can see.
- What actually reaches you each month?
- Four things, inside ten minutes of reading. The programme against its baseline. The cost plan against the last committed figure. The change register with every open item on it. The risks that could move either of the first two. Where a number is a forecast, the word forecast sits next to it on the page.
- What does it cost to find out whether the scheme works?
- Less than the design fees you’d spend proving it the long way round. Feasibility is phase 01 below, and it is deliberately short. In short, it is cheaper to be told no in week six than to be told no in week forty.
The phases this page walks down
Each section below carries its own number and the weeks that phase usually runs to. The numbered rule down the left is the same spine, so you can read where you are without scrolling back.
- 00Before anyone is appointed2–4 weeks
- 01Feasibility6–10 weeks
- 02Design and the consultant team20–30 weeks
- 03Procurement and the contract8–12 weeks
- 04Constructionthe long one
- 05Handover4–6 weeks
- 06Defects and the final account12 months
Those durations are the shape a Greater Manchester scheme usually takes, and not a quotation for yours. The overlaps matter more than the totals: design runs into procurement, and procurement runs into the first weeks on site.
ALL104 wkThe programme on one sheet
Every phase at once, drawn the way we issue it
Here is all of it on a single sheet. Behind each phase sits a pale baseline bar, where the dates stood when the programme was fixed. The solid bar in front is where they stand now. A rule drops in at the week the sheet was cut, so you can see what is behind you and what is still ahead.
All five change notes are printed beside the chart in full. Take a note with the keyboard or the pointer, and the bar it refers to slides right by the weeks that note cost.
- Feasibility
- Design and consents
- Procurement
- Construction
- Handover
Week 0 · 26 · 52 · 78 · 104
- 01 Trial pits found made ground under the northern half of the plot, so the investigation was extended before the appraisal closed. Two weeks, on the critical path.
- 02 A revised drainage strategy was asked for during determination and had to be re-consulted upon. Three weeks, on the critical path.
- 03 A second structural frame was priced alongside the first before the tender went out. One week, held inside the float in procurement.
- 04 Made ground under the northern half meant deeper foundations to the first two cores. Two weeks, on the critical path.
- 05 Commissioning of the incoming supply was booked behind another connection on the same street. One week, held inside float.
016–10 wkWhat feasibility has to answer
And it is allowed to answer no
Feasibility is the cheapest part of a scheme and the only part that can still stop it. We run it as a short set of tests, each with a written answer, and the answers reach you in one document rather than in six e-mails over a fortnight.
- The ground and what is already in it — made ground, old foundations, services crossing the plot, the levels you will have to work with.
- The consent position, read as programme risk rather than as a planning essay: how long determination is running locally, and what usually attaches to it.
- The abnormals — the costs that hide under the slab and behind the drainage, carried as ranges and never as a single tidy figure.
- An outline cost plan built on those ranges, with the contingency shown separately from the works.
- A first programme with a realistic determination period inside it, and the funding drawdown laid against that programme.
Every test comes back with an answer, a confidence and a note on what would firm it up. The confidence matters as much as the answer. A cost range you can take to a funder beats a single figure that came from nowhere, and the range narrows as surveys land.
A negative answer looks like this: abnormals eat the margin, determination pushes drawdown past what the funding allows, and the policy position on that plot has moved. We write that in the same document and in the same tone, and we say which of the three could still change. Otherwise you spend design fees proving something the site told you in week two. A feasibility that ends in no has done its job as completely as one that ends in a scheme.
0220–30 wkWho is appointed, and in what order
Seven appointments, one route for instructions
The order of appointment is not housekeeping. Appoint the cost consultant after the frame has been chosen and you will price a decision instead of informing it. Appoint the drainage engineer late and the levels come back to bite the slab. This is the order we work in, and the reason sits next to each one.
- 01Architectconcept, then the consent drawings
- 02Cost consultantan order of cost estimate while the scheme can still move
- 03Structural engineerframe and foundation options, priced against each other
- 04Civil and drainage engineerlevels, attenuation and the adoptable runs
- 05Services engineerloads, plant space and incoming capacity
- 06Principal designerthe design risk register, from the first sketch
- 07Principal contractorappointed against a tender, not against a conversation
Every instruction to that team travels one route. A single route stops the architect hearing one thing on a Tuesday and the engineer hearing another on the Wednesday. Requests for information, comments on drawings and fee variations all sit in one log, and you see the log whenever you want it.
The information release schedule is the piece clients rarely ask about and always need. It names the drawing, the person who issues it, the week it is due and the decision it unlocks downstream. Miss a release date and the effect shows up eleven weeks later as a hole in the procurement phase. Either way, the schedule is read at every design meeting and the misses are read out loud.
038–12 wkWhat a tender actually buys
The weeks when money stops being an estimate
A tender buys a price against a defined scope on a defined date. Everything the tender did not define stays with you, and it comes back as a variation once the contractor is on site. So the work in this phase is scope work: making sure the drawings, the specification and the preliminaries describe one building rather than three near-misses.
Once a tender is accepted the numbers change character. An estimate becomes a commitment, and a commitment can only be undone by an instruction. That is why the cost report keeps three figures apart and never lets them merge into a single headline.
Contingency drawdown
Contingency is not a discount you find at the end. It is cover, and the only question worth asking is how much of it is left against the work you have not yet committed. Put your four figures in and the arithmetic is printed line by line.
04longHow a change gets a number
Every week of it reported, whoever raised it
Every scheme changes. The only question is whether each change arrives carrying a reference, a cost and a programme effect, or arrives as a rumour in a meeting. We work the first way, from the first consultant appointment onwards.
A change enters the register the day it is raised, whoever raised it. It takes the next reference in sequence, the origin, a plain description, a cost effect, a programme effect in weeks and a status. Status moves from raised, to priced, to instructed or withdrawn. Only an instruction moves money into the committed column.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Reference | The next number in sequence; never reused and never renumbered. |
| Origin | Client, consultant, contractor, authority or site condition. |
| Description | One sentence a funder can read without the drawing in front of them. |
| Cost effect | A figure, with the word estimate or quotation stated on the same line. |
| Programme effect | Weeks, and whether those weeks land on the critical path. |
| Status | Raised, priced, instructed or withdrawn, with the date it last moved. |
| Instruction | The reference of the signed instruction, once one exists. |
The monthly report reads that register straight. It states the committed cost, the priced-but-uninstructed items as a separate figure, and the programme effect of the instructed ones. Items still being priced appear as open, with their origin and the week they were raised, so nothing waits quietly inside an inbox.
What is a week of float?
It is a week you can lose without moving the end date. Two tasks that follow each other do not always touch: if the second can start any time in a three-week window, there are three weeks of float between them. Lose two and the end date holds. Lose four and it moves, and the four weeks are no longer a delay to one task but a delay to the building.
Change-impact adder
Put your agreed variations in below. Weeks sitting on the critical path push the completion date; weeks off it are absorbed by float already in the programme. The arithmetic is a sum and nothing more: two totals, two counts, and every row echoed so you can read the sum back.
054–6 wkWhat lands on the day of practical completion
A certificate, a set of records and a list of what is outstanding
Practical completion is a date with legal weight, not a feeling about how finished a building looks. It moves the risk, it starts the defects period, and it releases half the retention. So the weeks before it are spent making sure the paperwork is ready to go out on the day the certificate is signed, rather than four months afterwards.
- The certificate itself, and the schedule of items still outstanding on the date it was issued.
- The operating and maintenance records: what is installed, who made it, how it is serviced and what the warranty says.
- The as-built drawings, matching what is actually in the ground and in the risers.
- The safety file required under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations, handed to you as the client.
- Building control sign-off, the commissioning records and the utility accounts in your name.
- Keys, access codes, alarm details and the insurance position from the certificate date onwards.
You will be asked to sign for that set, and the signature matters. It is the point at which the building stops being a project and starts being an asset that somebody has to run. In short, the handover is a transfer of knowledge as much as a transfer of keys.
0612 monthsThe twelve months after the certificate
Defects, retention and the number that closes the job
The defects period usually runs twelve months from practical completion. Things that were never going to show up in a dry fortnight in August show up in it: a flat roof after real rain, a heating system through a Manchester winter, a door that drops once the building has settled. We collect them, pass them to the contractor and keep the list open until each one is closed.
You do not chase that list yourself. Reports come to the same desk they came to during construction, and the same register format is used, so an item raised in month nine reads like an item raised in week nine.
The final account is the other half of this phase. It reconciles every instruction against the contract sum, settles the items that were still priced-but-uninstructed at completion, and arrives at one number. When that number is agreed and the defects list is closed, the remaining retention is released and the commission ends. Either way, you get a closing statement that shows how the first cost plan became the last.
One thing worth saying out loud: a commission can also end earlier than this, at feasibility, with a scheme that does not stack up. Both endings are written the same way, and neither is treated as a failure of the process.