Project monitoring involves comparing the progress of your self build with the project plan. The project management tools and itemised costs developed at the planning stage provide a baseline for comparison.
Time
At a glance, the Gantt chart provides an illustration of how the project is progressing relative to the schedule. It is easy to identify if there has been a slip and whether or not it is critical to the entire project or to follow on trades.
Cost
Cost control requires a little more effort and you need to input actual costs into your spreadsheet as payments are made. Compare them to your itemised budget costs to assess whether your project is financially on target.
Quality
Initially, quality can be monitored through design compliance. This requires you to get out there with your tape and plans to check that what is being built matches the plans and to some extent the requirements of building regulations and your warranty provider.
An architect’s specification may even include tolerances that will give you measurable allowances for some elements of the build.
There is no substitute for experience when monitoring quality but most people have a good appreciation of the difference. It is the usual story, keep your eyes and ears open and do plenty of research so you know what to look for!
Project Monitoring – Other
When monitoring the project, assess all the other project parameters including site safety, security, and warranty and building regulation compliance. On a small site like a self build these can usually be monitored ‘in progress’. Familiarise yourself with the requirements so that you can keep an eye on things on a daily basis.
Any deviations from the project plan identified during your project monitoring can be dealt with by the next step in the process – Project control.
Navigate to another element of the project management process:
PLAN – IMPLEMENT – MONITOR – CONTROL – COMPLETE – REVIEW
or
Return to Construction Project Management
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