I commenced working in the Construction Industry when I was 18 years old, this is also when I married my wife Tracey, and we are still happily married (so I am told), and have two great children aged 7 and 9.
I grew up in Plymouth and at the age of 17 moved to London, where I was housed in a government studio unit in Potters Bar, whilst on benefits trying to find work, which took about a month. I found work with W H Smiths and dabbled around in various roles until 18 at which point I went to work for a regional Fit Out contractor in Slough, I left the company as a Senior Quantity Surveyor. During my time with this employer I worked on some awesome projects valued between £250k and £4m, mostly within the hotel sector. My legacy was overseeing the fit out and construction of a large single home near Basingstoke, worth over £20m in construction work.
I have since gone on to own and sell my own construction business, working and assisting property developers on projects up to £2m and started Vast Group Limited in early 2009.
During the last 7 years, I have also been involved in a number of businesses outside of Construction and have had the pleasure of working in Dubai, St Lucia and Florida.
I really enjoy conducting business in the property industry and have had the opportunity to be involved in situations some of my peers never achieve in their lifetimes.
I am an experienced, time served building surveyor with extensive on site, on the ground construction and technical experience.
I hope you find my blogs of interest.
Hi Brad,
ReplyDeleteI’ve been involved in Architectural work including private practice for 20 years, working on both tendered and quotation priced fee-based projects. One practice I was employed with, had a split almost down the middle between both types of work, and they undertook a lot of tendering and winning contracts for the public sector, through what appeared at the time to be not just competitive, but highly competitive cost bids.
A noticeable difference with the actual tendered work, was how very stringent, inflexible and pressure related the carrying out of work activities was compared to that which was quoted, in terms of little room for manoeuvre in case of the unexpected; as with say, project overspend (a result of the competitive nature of tendering), i.e. overheads and costs - such as staff time spent on projects, and thus with the very nature of the work – ‘Architecture’ being at its core a design discipline, with often limited scope for creativity in work, which could suffer, being a time related activity. There could be project delays through no fault of our own, e.g. Client intervention / changes etc... Time Sheets were heavily scrutinized and examined with staff, quizzed on the detail and breakdown of elements.
There were issues with staff turnover and retention, with staff released from contracts and replaced. I can’t say for certainty being in a junior position at the time that this was ‘performance’ related, i.e. ‘Churning out the work’ to strict timescales, but looking back, if a member of staff left, they were replaced, an indicator that it was not for cost-cutting in terms of staffing reduction as one might see in times of recession, and simply a change of personnel. Rumour always was that if you didn’t perform, you were out.
In contrast, with the quotation work, there was typically greater scope to develop projects with budgets, and additional quotations and invoicing could occur as a project went on, for whatever reason, including unforeseen circumstances, and redressing costs incurred through working with a ‘challenging’ client and associated project changes.
With the quotation compared to the tendered work there was greater project flexibility and negotiation.
Regards,
Robin.
Hi Robin,
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to review and indeed respond. It's interesting seeing from the other side of the fence.
Warm regards
Brad