I was interviewed recently for a Podcast about lessons learn on the Project Management of home renovations. The slides and interview can be found here. However, I also wanted to give you a summary of the top tips on our Blog posts below.
Summary of the top tips:
- Set a baseline and manage the constraints to maintain quality
- “Fail to plan, plan to fail” – it’s an old mantra but still true today
- Prioritisation is key to success
- On home renovation projects, focusing on the important as well as the urgent is a constant challenge
- DIY PM – don’t do it, it’s a top 3 stress inducer
- You have to stay on top of the detail from start to finish
- GANTT charts are a key tool for professional project management – clearly highlight dependencies
- Change control procedures are essential – if you want to stay inside budget
- Use SaaS based PM tools for complex projects (Wunderlist, Slack,Wrike, MS_Project, JIRA, Basecamp, etc)
- Think ahead about the things that could go wrong and have a contingency plan
- Do your checks (financial, references, review sites, etc) on builders and suppliers
- Get a professional Project Manager to make it happen on time, quality and budget
- Stick to a budget and make sure you have a contingency
In conclusion, the key things to keep front of mind are:
- Know your limitations, Project Managing a house renovation is stressful, technical and time intensive
- The budget is your personal money/savings, get someone who knows what they are doing to manage it on your behalf
- Design everything up-front, document it in drawings that the builder can follow and reduce change requests to an absolute minimum
- Make decisions in a timely manner, don’t procrastinate
- Pick the right professional team to design, manage and deliver your project
- Build 5%-10% contingency into your budgets, you will use it
- Enjoy it!