Managing works to a historic building is more than simply a logistical problem. Material choices matter technically, and in what a planning authority will accept and what the building itself will accept over the decades ahead. Contractor selection matters: the skills required to work sensitively with lime, with old timber, with historic brickwork are rare and specialised, and not readily interchangeable between one material and the next.
Oversight matters most of all.
I take on projects across Norfolk and its neighbouring counties, within approximately two hours of North Norfolk.
What this covers
- I appraise the options and test feasibility at the outset.
- I identify which statutory consents the works need, and build the programme around getting them: listed building consent, scheduled monument consent, planning permission, Building Regulations.
- I write the specification and the working drawings.
- I run the tender and advise on contractor selection.
- I administer the JCT contract.
- I monitor the site through to practical completion.
I've managed projects from modest repair programmes to schemes worth several hundred thousand pounds.
I have long experience building and managing project teams, and I can put one together for the larger, more complex schemes that need a range of experts to see the work done well.
When a surveyor leads
On a new building the architect leads, because the design is the project. On repair and alteration to an old one the design follows the fabric, and the governing question becomes what the building is doing and what it will accept. That is a surveyor's question, which is why the lead consultant role sits with me on conservation and repair work.
Where projects go wrong
Three ways, mostly.
The consent arrives late, and the programme was built around a date that then moves. Everything downstream of it moves too, usually into worse weather.
The specification is written before anyone has opened up enough to know what is there, so the contract begins with variations and the budget is fiction by the second valuation.
Or the contractor was chosen on price. A tender return well under the others usually means that firm has priced a different job from the one specified, and on lime, old timber and historic brickwork the cheap version shows inside a few years. I tender to firms I have reason to believe can do the work, and I tell you when a low price is a warning rather than a saving.
All three are cheap to avoid at the front end and expensive to fix once work has started, which is why feasibility and consents deserve more patience than they usually get.
Fees
I quote per project, and the basis depends on the shape of the work. I agree it with you in writing before anything starts, along with what is covered at each stage.