By now you are well on your way to getting your recent purchase over the line! Whoop, Whoop!
We all have a penchant for certain aspects of property investing 
, some love the numbers 
, others network, many of us get into the nitty gritty of the project 
. One of the biggest costs, especially during this time of rising material costs and competent trades is the refurbishment bill. 
Having recent attended a great two-day training event, credit to Paul Tinker, I wanted to share some of those learnings 
. Those two days have given me the opportunity to step back and reflect, even when feeling the pressure to push forward on our recent project 
. If you are looking at a new project or even struggling to see the wood for the trees, these may help. 
- Undertake and understand your Survey – if you are unsure ask the surveyor and get further investigations undertaken.
- Build a specification relevant to your project – there is no point spending £1000’s on bathroom tiles in a £40k property.
- Establish a schedule of works with key milestones – this has caught me out before with overrun and being on the back foot, even though my background is project management!
- Calculate your build costs and continually work on these – I believe continuous learning is the key to development and improvement, nibbling away to make small improvements while maintaining standards is SO important.
- Go out to tender – quite a formal expression, in layman’s terms that often means getting trades / companies to “give you a price”.
- Establish how you are going to “procure” these services – set out your payment terms and expectations, when you pay your suppliers and how (not cash in hand)…………
- Engage your chosen suppliers and contract them onto the project, ensure you have an agreed set of terms and work to be undertaken. You need a frame of reference.
- Manage the project – factor in travel time, use of a project manager, establish methods of communication, how variations are managed and agreed. We have used WhatsApp to great effect on Project D.
- Check you are compliant, have adequate insurances in place to cover work being undertaken, think risk.
- Create procedures and systemise what you are doing, after all hopefully this will not be your one and only project.
A challenge I know as, working on your business is not the same as working in your business.
Good luck with your project , any questions please ask. 
