Avebury’s Gavin Skelly gives us the final instalment on the building of the UK’s first development of Ikea’s BoKlok Homes for developer Live Smart@Home.

I’m writing this at the airport, waiting for my flight to Cape Town – I’m going to spend Christmas and New Year there with my sister and my niece.

I’m certainly ready for some sunshine. December has been frantic. Not least because I’m now looking after the whole country as national construction manager. It’s certainly been a bit of an eye-opener – I’m now getting involved in the early stages of deals.

As for the BoKlok development, we won’t be handing over the first block until 21 Jan, rather than the original Christmas date. This is all due to issues with the services, but the less said about that the better…The good news is that this will still be in time for the client to begin marketing the flats in February. One job for January will be to construct safe access onto the site for potential buyers.

Lessons learned over the last month? Flat-pack kitchens are just as much of a challenge for joiners as they are for the average DIYer. Normally, we would buy assembled carcasses with complete base and wall units. This time we ordered 136 flat-pack kitchens from the local Ikea and they all arrived on one wagon. That’s a lot of boxes. And hinges. And screws…

Despite this, things are progressing more-or-less to plan. We managed to claw back time lost on the windows (they were supposed to be installed in the timber frame panels before they came to site, but the first few weren’t) by plastering before the first fix pipe work and then doing first and second fix pipework in one operation. That cut the time in half.

The biggest hindrance has been the amount of interest in the job (not sure I should say that as the publicity is great for the client… it’s just not so good in terms of project delivery). There have been bus loads of visitors, including a junior housing minister and numerous councils. It’s all been a bit Disney World so the project manager and the rest of the site team have been on their best diplomatic behaviour. They’ve done a good job too: I think everybody has been suitably impressed.

December has also been a busy month for the Jags (the band I’m in). We’ve had two gigs – one at the Avebury Christmas do in Milton Keynes, the other at a rugby club in Sutton Coldfield. We rocked, by the way.

For the BoKlok site, January sees the start of the two- and three-bedroom houses, 57 of them in all. We’re planning for the first of the timber frames to arrive at the beginning of March. For me, new year means getting my teeth into my new role and working out how many new project managers we need for 2008.

News Year’s Resolutions? Well, I don’t really believe in them. But I’m hoping to become an FCIOB. I’m in front of the panel in March, so wish me luck…

Source

Construction Manager