Friday 31 July 2009

Project manager, London.


Triangles office development in London, Docklands.
During the late eighties at the height of the boom, I worked on two eight storey office blocks in the heart of the docklands, just across the road from Canary wharf.
It was based on two traingular developments, hence the name! and had a curved facade to the road side, with all elevations being completely glazed, which at its time was totally new concept.
The company was Elliott Construction Ltd, which was a realy good family run buisiness, which at the time had a turnover of over 70M pounds, which then was a big figure. Our job was valued at £14M which is almost funny money now for such a project. It was my second contract with them and I had just graduated from University and was under the wing of senior contract managers who guided me in the big world of construction.
The site itself was totally occupied by the buildings, we had a small slither of land to one side where the offices were stacked up to two, three levels then on top of some the offices we had a landing stage which we could use as a temporary store for materials. Two tower cranes, one for each block, and sometimes two or three mobiles were going at any one time.
I dont know if its time, but building sites seemed to have a bit more characters about them, then. Or maybe its just that then I was out and about the site for most of my day running the project on the site. Now being more senior quite often you fly in, quick walk about then in a meeting room for the rest of the day, finally emerging late at night and then back to the airport to catch a plane, or a hotel room for another project the next day.
Having reminised, I also rememeber the arrival of the fax machine, which really did revolutionise site. Now we were instructed instead of writing letters and waiting for over a week for a reply we could send them immediately! Contractually this made and changed the project manager role over night. Before, you used the telephone (not mobile) at the end of each day to phone round all your trades and agrees scheduling of cranes and materials etc, now meeting mins could be sent out at the end of the day and contractual obligations confirmed in an instant.
Really when you look at this this really was a major time frame where project management then changed into a paper chasing flurry, of who could get out their fax of agreed times, numbers, materials, men etc confirmed the fastest. Before although meeting mins were taken as you did not see them until several days after you would work of your own notes taken in the meeting that were relevant to you, and then get on with it. Now you had this pile of faxs each time you came back to your desk. Which you had to read normally before you got on the phonbe because you wanted to see if anything had changed and you could discuss that as well.
Before long more and more time is spent on the paper work, and not on the site, and hence now the use of more people being involved just with documentation on site. Especially when you start adding the H&S, room data sheets, sign offs, checking mens documentation before they are allowed on site. Its amazing anything gets done at all.

Dundalk racetrack




Dundalk racetrack was recently refurbished from just a dog stadium to also incorporate floodlight racing for horses.

Dundlak racetrack

More info can be found on



Another one of my projects that I worked on over the last few years.

Project manager, Lisburn, Co Down.

Looking for a project manager?
Well you have found one!

Twenty years experience in the construction industry working for client, main contractor on major projects throughout UK and Ireland.

Wednesday 29 July 2009

John Cook


Freelance project manager in the construction industry for over twenty years, working throughout UK and Ireland on prestige developments, for a variety of clients, ranging from main contractors, client, sub-contractor and manufacturers and suppliers to the industry.
Wishes to help others working on projects who may either be lacking in experince, or need to bolster theres. Can either be through this portal or through skype etc
Website:

Imax, Belfast.



Imax theatre, Odyssey Millennium Complex, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

I was the clients representative on this project, and this was one of the buildings within the complex that I worked on.

Sheridan the company distributing Imax throughout Ireland already had an Imax theatre built in Dublin, however its location was in a bad part of town and it closed within a year. However the Belfast operation is still running and I have seen a couple of films there myself.

The experience is amazing, especially the cartoon they do with a guy with a ladder. It swings out and everyone ducks, then shortly after he throws a can of paint out towards the audience and achieves the same effect, however the paint hangs there in mid air in globules, which everyone tries to touch as you believe it is there just out of your hands reach. very clever.

The film I saw was about kids going back to prehistoric times and thus bought in scary T Rex scenes of being crushed by monster as it runs to you. Funny but the effect was not as dramatic as the cartoon scenario.

Friday 24 July 2009

Construction Industry today

Hi all

well sitting at home watching the world becoming more scared by the day of swine flu, it seems that the major concern regards the economy is being put to pages 6 and 7 in the papers and news items. Just driving around town and monitoring sales in the housing market in Northern Ireland and you can see almost stagnation developing. The housing industry and now the commercial side is just grinding to a halt with no sign of the clouds of recession of blown away, in fact you could say that the clouds are still getting darker, and the thunder is now moving in.

The plan fact of the matter is that the economy is still in freefall in certain sectors, the main being the service sector and along with it the biggest and most powerfull of the drivers the construction industry, which is the barometer of a countries financial well being. Here in the North we also have a problem in that the Republic is in an almost tail spin regards housing prices and that effects the Northern property market as it is now believed that a number of large investments in property could be coming up for auction as more and more Southern companies fold.

Having spoken with many developers it would seem that they believe that there is a line that house costs cannot fall through as the building costs have not reduced any more dramatically than 5%. Materials, labour etc to put together in a property can be assertained to be priced on a bare minimal spec to come out at a set price. This then leaves floating equations such as the cost of land with relevant planning permision. The developers, especially the ones purchasing their land over the last 2-3 years, will fight vigourously in stating that this cannot come down below the figures they parted with at the dying days of the boom period. Many were looking very forelorn a year ago before the interest payments came down, and were counting only a few months till their cash flow dried up and eventual collapse of their empires. However the interest rates came down and their period of reprieve was extended to many cases I spoke to, a year or more.

Well time has passed and the lucky ones have managed to offload a lot of their debts by selling a few houses, others have practically given them away with clever marketing plans. However we are still not moving into a period where land can be bought, to erect a building and sell for a profit. Untill large amounts of housing land comes available at a price that provides the average joe to buy at house 3-4 times his salary (As banks are not going to lend over this anymore) were never really going to move forward. The economists will be heard piping up that because there is this shortage this will drive the privce back up, but then no one can borrow the money to fund that dream, and the market continues to stagnate further. To add further to the woes the properties selling in agents websites are so vastly priced from old day costs to revised for selling costs that it is very hard to see the real price a property is worth. Basically all you can go buy is what someone is willing to pay.

The only real short term quick solution that I can see is that a think tank puts together what a plot of land should cost, then universally revalues all properties using this formulae along we build costs that are known for various propertys. We then have a thought out price structure that everyone can move with in re-energising the property market.

Tuesday 21 July 2009


Hello world


This is my first blog!


Idea is to try and pick up some traffic to my web site and hopefully help people with there construction projects around the world.


Couple of experiments here.




Hopefully you will visit.


Secondly always good to aquire a new skill, plan to update daily a see what happens.


So anyone reading who has or knows any construction projects going on that they believe may need a bit of an experienced hand to help please leave me a message.