The Build Process - Project Control Cycle Components - Part 3

The project control cycle applies just as readily to activities such as demolition, installation of  plumbing fixtures, floor and wall tile, and painting as it does to the suppliers who are providing the materials and products used to build your renovation. Your project’s success, and especially for a seemingly small one like a bathroom, needs to follow a Project Control Cycle  because one small deviation can have a significant impact on the progress of the work.

Here is a more detailed explanation for each of the Project Control Cycle components.

Set Initial Goals

The first task in the project cycle is to set goals for each of the activities. This step needs to be completed before the job is awarded to the contractor to do the work.  Many of the goals you are required to identify are the project pricing, materials selected, and the completion of the contract documents such as the detailed working drawings, scope of work and specifications.

The pricing allows you to arrive at an initial cost for the project. The working drawings, scope of work, and specifications identify who is going to do the work, where it’s going to be done, what materials are to be used, and how long the project will take. Simply put, the budget for the construction should not exceed the costs anticipated in the estimate nor can the time planned in a schedule exceed the number of days permitted.

Why? Under the terms of the contract, expectations for the budget and schedule are clearly disclosed.

It is important these initial goals are established and agreed to in writing before any work starts. Knowing what these goals are allows you to measure the project’s progress enabling you to address issues in a proactive rather than a reactive manner. So if your scope of work outlines a task needs to be completed in 1 day, and 3 days later the task is still not complete, the damage this delay causes to the project becomes extremely evident, especially if it’s the early stages, such as the site preparation activity.

Establish Job Plans

Establishing your project’s Job Plan is a three step process.  

First, the job is broken down into its composite parts or activities.  

The second step is to plan and optimize the activity for maximum efficiency.  For example, some of the activities may be Site Preparation, Demolition, Mechanical Rough-in, Framing, etc..

Lastly, with the activities identified, these are then strung together in a realistic order of work.  This order of work is converted into a diagram and calculations are applied to determine at what time and on what dates the activity should take place.  

The result is a plan you can use as a guide for all of those involved with building the job. The job plan is used to effectively cope with the inevitable changes that will occur.

Monitor Progress

Monitoring progress of the project is a two step process.  

The first part is carried out on the job site at regular intervals and involves monitoring the actual events occurring. This may happen once or twice a day, typically being at the beginning and half way through the day.  The purpose of this monitoring activity is to determine who is on site and/or confirm if the materials have arrived or are available for the work scheduled.

The information gathered from the monitoring activity is compared to the working drawings to confirm the work is being done to meet the design developed. The specifications are consulted to ensure the correct materials delivered are those purchased. Jobsite health and safety practices and standards are important, and the trades doing the work are observed to confirm they are meeting those standards.

The second step of the process is to monitor the schedule, or schedule monitoring as it’s called, and this is done on an activity by activity basis to measure if: the work starts on time, is performed within the time allocated, and is completed according to the schedule.  Schedule monitoring is done at all stages of construction, from set-up to the final cleaning. This includes the performance of all of the required inspections too.

The Build Process - Your Project and the Project Control Cycle - Part 2

To bring order to the seemingly chaotic world of construction, a formal method is used to control, monitor, evaluate, support decision making, and allow you to understand how well your project is progressing once it’s underway. Your contractor’s goal is to meet each of the objectives you define and outline in your construction contract and those objectives are to:

• Establish a realistic schedule
• Work within a realistic budget
• Identify resources/materials used
• Define the project’s outcome

To manage a project such as a bathroom renovation, the method used to do all of this is called the Project Management Cycle. Basically, it’s a term used to identify the project’s performance criteria, allowing you to control and monitor the progress of the job.  Using a Project Management Cycle enables your contractor to establish short term goals and you to determine if these goals are being met.  

If project goals are not being met, the Project Management Cycle will show you how successful or unsuccessful your project is so action can be taken to get everything back on track, fast, or keep on making steady progress.

To do this, the Project Control Cycle allows you understand the who, what, when and how of your project to:

• Control material and personnel resources
• Organize trades
• Direct activities
• Decide on the use of resources and individuals
• Control and direct trades toward a goal
• Define a formal decision making process to achieve specific goals

You need to be able to understand how this is being accomplished because your project has the following characteristics:

• It’s fractured
• There a large number of disconnected people involved (craftsmen, subcontractors, suppliers, designers, and you, the owner)
• Suppliers and installers need to be coordinated
• A small mistake or oversight can have huge implications later on in the project
• Everyone has an opinion
• Decisions have to take into account the requirements, opinions, and attitudes of all those involved
• The customer is rarely right (because of their limited experience and practical knowledge)

Here, in a nutshell, are the major steps used to ensure every activity performed for your project is successful.  Each project requires your manager to:

• Set initial goals
• Establish job plans
• Monitor progress on work done
• Compare progress to job plans
• Look for deviations in the work
• Take corrective action
• Collect historical data

Now let’s take a more in-depth look at what this all means to you and how you will be able to determine the effectiveness of the manager in charge of your project.

Kitchen Planning and Primary Work Centers

Kitchen Planning - Primary Work Centers

You may find your kitchen is cluttered, there never seems to be enough room to cook or prepare meals, and someone always seems to be in someone's way.  There may be more than one reason your kitchen design may not work for you. Since the kitchen is the "heart" of the home, it's important to get it right.

As a lay person, how do you know if the kitchen you're looking at works or not?  Are there rules good kitchen design needs to follow? Templates even?  I mean, where do you even start?

To help you better understand how your kitchen works, you need to learn about some fundamentals about kitchen design and layout. It all starts with what are called the Primary Work Centers. The importance of Primary Work Centers are they impact the kitchen’s layout, restrict what can or cannot be done in the kitchen, and set the design criteria needed to create an efficient, comfortable, and well planned workspace.

Understanding what the Primary Work Centers are, what they're composed of, and the types of activities that occur enables you to evaluate your current kitchen layout with a more practiced and pragmatic eye. Not only will a good design appeal to you aesthetically, you will know why it makes the heart of your home a very comfortable place to be.

Primary Work Centers

The idea behind Primary Work Centers is based on a rather simple premise.  Group activities in the kitchen into distinct areas and then identify the tools and space needed for these activities. 

That's it in a nutshell really.

Whatever the activities are for each area it only makes sense to ensure there is ample storage, enough counter space, and sufficient lighting for you to be able to carry out the tasks you need to perform.

OK, so what are these "activities"? How granular do you get anyway?  

Let's keep the count down to four activities and they are: cleanup, mixing, cooking, and serving. It also becomes evident that grouping these items might make more sense if you placed the cleanup area next to the mixing, the mixing area near the cooking, and the serving area, well, it can be left to float around a bit or put close to the clean-up area.

Needless to say, identifying these four areas allows you to see there are some relationships between the work centers that are stronger than others.

So, How Does This Help Me?

Circles Keep It Simple

If you look at the diagram provided the arrangement of the work centers fits within the layout of the room and they either create new circulation paths or accommodate existing ones.  

As shown in this example the clean up area is located between the mixing and serving work centers.  The cooking work center is floating up there at the top.  Maybe it's an island, or perhaps it's located on exterior wall? Who knows?  This layout looks like it can accommodate two entrances into the space too.

What we do understand is the work center layout needs to fit the space available, provide the work centers with context to one another, and moving any one center to a new location impacts what is done where and the flow through the space.


The simplicity of designing or evaluating your kitchen using the four work centers allows you to:

• Learn how activities relate to one another on a macro rather than micro level 
• Understand how moving one work center to a different location affects the entire layout
• Quickly create numerous layouts by something as simple as circles
• Choose a layout that works for you
• Determine if the layout works for the space available.
  

Free Estimates Need To Die

Free Estimates suck.

You want to know why? Because the scope, specifications, and other items associated with the project are unknown, and because these are unknown, the ability to price out the project is unknown too.

All around, the Free Estimate is a waste of time for you, your customer, and makes us all look like nincompoops too.

So what needs to be done to fix this?

Believe it or not, I have an idea.  It's a pretty simple fix too.

First, Free Estimates need to die, and the people advocating their reps to give them shown the door to someplace else. Pretty easy fix, if you ask me.

Information As An Image

Think of the information exchanged between you and the customer as an image.  In order for either of you to have the foggiest idea of what it is you are looking at, the image needs to be clear, focused, illuminated, have context, and be viewed from the right distance or perspective.

Let's take a simple project (and I'm not going to let you know what it is either) to show you what I mean.

First, we have the initial call.

First Information Exchange

Something is being described here and the focus is somewhat customer centric.  I want you to give me, this, that, and another thing, you to be here on Saturday afternoon at 2:00 PM because blah, blah, blah.  This conversation is going nowhere fast. Usually the Free Estimate thing is brought up. Now try to describe what this project is all about, and give me a price to boot.

The Conversation Continues

Things are getting a bit more clearer and you're both beginning to share information about what it is you're talking about.  There's still quite a bit of fog and stuff going on here so to help "educate" you, the client demands you come out to "see" what it is they're talking about. Oh, and maybe you can give me some design ideas while we talk about the Free Estimate? Right?

The Conversation Continues Some More

The project still lacks scope, focus, context, is not clear in its intent, and although the customer may feel this one wee image contains all the information needed to give them a Free Estimate, a detail doesn't define a project.

If you're a customer, your first step is to hire the right professionals to help you bring your project into a focused image. This will require you to spend time working on defining, creating, and clearly illuminating the project's scope and specifications so anyone can easily understand what it is you want to do.

What The Customer Was Talking About

New Home? Wait Before Finishing Your Basement

Using The Test Of Time

You've just picked up the keys to your new home and are anxious to move in.  First thing on the agenda, finish your basement.

Is that the right thing to do? Have you really thought this through? Maybe you need to wait, live in the house a little, to ensure all is OK.

Your best plan of action after getting the keys to your new home is to wait, watch, and wonder to see what, if anything, will happen.

Why Wait And For How Long?

If you just moved into a newly constructed home it's recommended to wait at least two years before finishing your basement.

Two years? Are you crazy!?

Umm, why so long?

Well there are a number of necessary reasons for you to wait.  I'll review the top three reasons here.

The first has to do with the thousands of pounds of water trying to evaporate out of the walls and floor slab of your new concrete foundation. Water always moves from a wet to dry area and since your foundation walls are waterproofed on the exterior side, and the ground outside tends to be damper than the air inside your home, the only avenue of escape left for water to use is towards the interior of your home.

Mold in an insulated basement wall

The second reason is new homes need time to settle and show how their systems perform. What if something as random as a shrinkage crack appears as the concrete cures? The time and effort needed to remove the material to gain access to the area needing repair is significantly lower if there are no finish materials to demolish and reinstall.

The third important reason is to dive you time to determine how well the surface water is managed around your home.  Displaced earth, such as the backfill used around your home has voids in it and with time, settles and does so unevenly.  As a result, low spots form, puddling occurs, and you now have a surface water issue you need to manage in the yard or alongside your foundation wall.

There are a number of other reasons such as getting to know how your family lives, changing family dynamics, or the need to create an income property.  These are important to consider but they are independent of the systems used for your new home.

Renovating Your Basement?

It Only Makes Sense

More often than the basement is an area homeowners are itching to tackle as a renovation project and why not? When it comes to creating affordable livable space, the basement has a great deal going for it.

You're starting off with a floor, walls, and a ceiling of sorts.  The challenge is to develop the space into areas you and your family can use and enjoy and make the transition from the existing living space above seamless with the space below.

Compared to building an addition of the same size, your basement renovation makes perfect economic sense too.  There's a real incentive to make the basement renovation happen, especially when you consider how it will free up cluttered space upstairs.

Not So Fast...

Before you begin to even contemplate renovating your basement, you need to ensure the basement is fit for development.  What this means is the space needs to be evaluated to ensure the time, effort and money poured into the project is worth it.

Doing the project the wrong way can have catastrophic implications, and I'm not talking resale either. I'm talking the structural failure of your foundation and replacing your foundation will cost you 10s if not 100s of thousands of dollars.

Image 1 - Foundation Walls

Image 1 - Foundation Walls shows a classic illustration of foundation walls that are in imminent danger of collapse.  Actually, these walls were so unsafe they were demolished and replaced at a cost of $120,000 CAD.  These walls indicate there has been a long standing moisture problem because of the efflorescence and spalling that's visible.

Signs of Trouble

Efflorescence on a wall of this age and to this extent indicates the wall is continuously cycled through soaking and drying off periods.  Efflorescence isn't harmful, it's just what's left of the dissolved mineral deposits that were dissolved in the water that evaporated. The white coating on the wall directly above the laundry tub gives a good indication of the soaking pattern for the water.

Efflorescence isn't harmful.  It's just salt or mineral deposits on the face of the wall, but what they do when dried out is cause a chemical imbalance within the foundation material.  When the wall gets wet once again, water rushes in to rebalance system with such force (in excess of 5,000 psi) the water blows off the surface of the wall off causing another condition called spalling.

Some people think spalling is due to the expansion of the crystals, but it's actually the pressure from the water rushing in to negate the chemical imbalance.  The long term impact of spalling is it slowly micro blasts your wall apart until there's nothing of any substance left.

So before you decide to invest in your basement renovation, you need to evaluate your basement to ensure the time, effort, and investment you make is worth it.  Seeing signs of efflorescence and spalling means there's work to be done  before you can convert your unused basement space into a comfortable healthy living area for you and your family.