"Dave Plowman" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Dave wrote:
When I last had work done I spoke to the various guys that the builder
had brought in and found that there was a difference in the rate I was
being charged and the rate that they would have charged if they were
working direct. In particular, the guy who did the windows apparently
had to give a sizeable "bung" (his word) to the builder.

A half decent builder will have the key personnel - like chippy, brickie,
labourer etc on his books already, and will pay them some sort of retainer
if not full wages when there's no work on for whatever reason. So like any
employer he is going to charge you more than he pays them - or do you
really think your garage mechanic gets 110 quid an hour? ;-)

I know of people who say they saved up to half the builder quote by
managing their own builds.

I know of people who've tried and made a mess of it. IMHO, you need a deal
of experience to co-ordinate this sort of thing, and if you had it you
wouldn't be asking.

It would be good to hear some first hand experiences.

If money above all else is the prime consideration and you have plenty of
time on your hands and an even temperament, it might be worth a try.


I'd agree with Dave. When we had our first extension built, I did all the PM
worked, aranging for skips, plant hire, builders, materials. I guess I saved
maybe 10%, possibly 15% tops. On a £15k project, that was about £1k - £1.2k.
Some of the savings were eroded as I was not getting the sort of discounts
the builder would get. As a good long term customer, he might have got 15%
discount, whereas I was only managing to get say 5%. And you need to factor
in how much your time is worth, because you are going to spend a lot of time
and effort chasing around.

And then there's unforseen expenses. For example, when digging the footing,
the compressor for the pneumatic drill gave up the ghost. Unfortunately the
hire firm didn't have a spare, so I had to chase around and hire another,
whilst paying the workmen and waiting for the refund from the first hire
shop.

At the end of the day, when we had the second storey built a couple of years
later, I used the same builder but left all the PM work to him. It really
wasn't worth the hassle for the savings.

If you do want to save a bob or two, try doing some of the work yourself.
For example, in both cases I did all the plumbing and wiring. One unforseen
saving was that having agreed the timescale for completion of wiring and
plumbing, the builder disappeared completely until the agreed date. As a
result, there was no charge at all during the week in question.

hth
Clive