RESIDENTIAL, FEWER THAN 30 UNITS

GOLD

All building work is disruptive to neighbours,
but local resentment and hostility towards this speculative development was unusually ferocious, and it took an equally unusual degree of tact, diplomacy and patience from Steve Head to overcome this particular challenge.

In a surprisingly short amount of time, given the uninhibited nature of many complaints, Head gained the locals’ trust, allaying fears by introducing himself to the neighbours and providing them with his mobile number so they could call him with any concerns, queries
or complaints.

Refusing to be deterred by unfavourable odds was part and parcel of Head’s management of this scheme. For example, he invited the police and local authorities to the site to prove that the extremely narrow access road was being used as a rat run to avoid congestion in the nearby high street, and thereby won agreement to his traffic management plan.

Access was indeed the defining issue for the site, which was surrounded by residential listed buildings and had a footprint that covered 80% of the plot, making material deliveries and storage a rigorous exercise in meticulous planning. With a site entrance just five metres wide including the bellmouth, Head had to change the proposed roof design from truss to cut roofs as truss lorries could not get into the site and offloading into the narrow, busy road was not feasible.

Installing the drainage was also a problem as a reduce dig had removed 250 lorryloads of earth, leaving the new site lower than the inverts of the existing foul sewer. But Head achieved a considerable saving on the budget by talking to the now compliant neighbours and finding, after a good deal of investigative work, a sewer below the site, so that only storm drainage had to be pumped uphill.

Amicable but determined and self-motivated, gifted with exceptional administrative and negotiating skills, Head won considerable praise from local residents – including some of the most ardent initial objectors – when he completed this very successful project.

SILVER

Stephen Green must have felt a bit apprehensive. He joined this project just a week before it took delivery of the timberframe panels, the site had neighbours no site manager would have chosen (close to a busy Tesco, opposite a medical centre with 24/7 emergency ambulance access, and overlooked by the office of Linden’s chief executive), and he was expected to move from oversite to fully sold in 16 weeks – something that would normally take 24 weeks to deliver with a standard build.

Green got to grips fast with the discipline of “lean” project management. He had to, given the astonishing speed at which the project was expected to run. Instead of the conventional programme’s allocation of a little extra time to each task to allow for it not going to plan, the lean method timetables on the assumption that everything will go reasonably well and builds in contingency time in strategic places.

For this project, Green had a 12-week schedule plus a four-week buffer. He got off to a flying start by identifying the potential for gaining some precious time by covering in the two-storey roof while erecting the third-storey
panels, allowing internal trades to start slightly earlier than programmed. And he never looked back.

That Green delivered this development two days early and to budget, and to a quality that earned industry-leading customer satisfaction scores is testimony to his pride in his work and passion for the industry, in which he has worked since leaving school. Green led by example, communicating his plan, his timetables and his expectations to everyone.

There was simply no room on this job for compromise or anything less than total commitment, and the team, which had never worked together before, delivered to Green’s own exacting performance criteria.

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Christopher Baker (StonesWood Construction)
for Meadows Rise, Slaithwaite, Yorkshire; Gary Barnes (Cala Homes South), for Le Jardin Vert, Sunningdale, Berkshire; Jesse Bone (Bewley Homes)
for Brownlow Lodge, Reading; Anthony Butcher MCIOB (Charles Church) for Albany Heights, St Albans; Harry Crossland (Southdale Homes) for Belle Isle, Leeds; Colin Macleod (Bellwinch Homes) for the Glade, Storrington, West Sussex; Hugh Reid ACIOB (Bewley Homes) for Westdene, Walton-on-Thames.