First Meeting With Main ContractorBefore the start of the project, you need to hold a meeting with the main contractor to establish a regular timeframe for site meetings and other pre-contract issues. This first meeting needs to be at your property and with a senior member of the main contractor’s team or the contractor himself.
Your first meeting agenda should include:
- site set-up (site consideration checklist);
- visitors;
- site instructions;
- inspections/quality control;
- environmental issues;
- welfare facilities;
- health and safety issues;
- site meetings.
Site Set-Up
When the time comes to start the project, you should know where the builder/contractor plans to set up the
site office and any welfare facilities (if applicable). You need to be satisfied that their plans are not going to cause you unnecessary inconvenience.
Site Consideration Checklist
In order to make life easier, a site consideration checklist is useful to eliminate elements that are not required and those that will need to be prioritised, as discussed in Chapter 6.
The checklist should include:
- site office size and position;
- parking restrictions;
- storage of material (including protection);
- skip position;
- portable toilet (if applicable);
- scaffolding (security arrangements);
- water facilities;
- power facilities;
- noise restrictions (if applicable);
- delivery times (site working hours);
- photographs (pavement and road).
There may also be many other considerations, depending on the nature and location of the project. Some builders or companies will have a person who deals with site planning, analysing all aspects of the work from local traffic controls to where the site toilet will
be situated. However, this level of planning is usually associated with the commercial side of the construction industry.
It is important to discuss these issues in detail, as they can cause client/contractor problems even if the standard of work is very high.
Visitors
If the work is to be carried out while you are not at the property during the day, you must ensure that the security and privacy of your home is not compromised by any unauthorised visitors. You must let the builder/contractor know that only visitors who have an active role to play in the project will be allowed access, and that employees of the builder/contractor are aware of these instructions.
In order to ensure that these risks are minimised, it would be advisable to issue the builder/contractor with a list of people who may need to have access to the property. These may include representatives of elements of the project that you are dealing with yourself, such as carpet suppliers, kitchen suppliers, specialist finishing contractors, etc.
It would be advisable, however, to arrange to meet any representatives of companies that you are dealing with
yourself at a mutually agreed time to ensure that the correct information is passed on.
Some reps will assume that the builder/contractor knows all of the specific details of the project and may be given information that is acted upon, only to find later that the information was incorrect. In this situation, the project could be delayed because alterations to or a complete reinstallation of equipment is required. This would definitely cause problems all round.
The site foreman should have a site diary in which all site visitors are recorded, and which you must be informed of at site meetings. If an inspection of some description has been carried out, information should be recorded in the diary against the name of the person who made the inspection together with any comments or results.
It is important to let the builder/contractor know that if his employees see anyone on site who should not be there, they should ask them to leave the site immediately.