What has been taxing Gavin Skelly this month? Find out in the latest installation from the Avebury regional construction manager who is overseeing the UK’s first development of Ikea’s BoKlok Homes for developer Live Smart@Home.

I seem to have picked up a window bug this month! Ive got a couple of sites where window manufacturers are letting me down, St James Village being one of them. Its not directly our problem as external frames are part of the Timber Frame Package, but it leaves us with the problem of playing catch up once the frames are finally fitted. Ive got my contractual drum out and am making the right noises, but at the end of the day, the project suffers which is my main concern.

So although the panels for the first two blocks are up, we cannot crack on with the cladding and rendering as fast as we might until the windows have been installed.

It’s infuriating. If a window manufacturer slips internally on their programme, you can hardly put the order elsewhere as lead times make this unfeasible. I have made my feelings quite clear to the Timber Frame Supplier, and polished my contractual armour, but it’s a waiting game for the next few days to see how its going to pan out.

A week is a long time on a programme as tight as ours but we’re still aiming to get the first block finished by Christmas. Apart from the window situation, everything else worked quite well. We lifted the roofs on, stripped the scaffold three weeks after it went up and put temporary staircases in. Now we’re doing first fix. Unusually we will plaster before mechanical 1st fix as the pipework is predominantly laid in the floating floors. Also means less mess on the floor as its laid after skim. The decorators are due to start mid-November.

Thank goodness for the groundworks contractor who is steaming ahead with 90% of the substructure work complete. Soon we’ll be looking at digging service trenches and stage 2 groundworks round the first block.

And thank goodness for my co-ordinator Lisa Ord who has the persistence of a pit-bull terrier when it comes to dealing with the service companies. Usually you call up, speak to someone who has no idea what you are talking about, get passed on about 10 times and finally find someone who might be able to help. It’s like Chinese water torture. If it was me I would loose the rag and throw the phone across the office. But not Lisa.

Source

Construction Manager