Construction Management

Much of our work occurs before a shovel even touches the ground. Planning and preparations are key in order to ensure a high-quality construction that is on-time and on-budget. Some of the tasks we handle during this important phase include:

• Doing an analysis of your land, Water Supply and Septic System Requirements
• Permits and documents that may be required by your lender
• Optimizing your home on the lot including placement, orientation and accommodation of hydro services and access
• Optional design and architectural services including complete home design and structural engineering
• Design optimization to save you money
• Trial budgeting, to make sure the plan fits your budget
• Tendering process for all elements using our database of trades and services
• Analysis of bid responses using an open book process so you know and understand all cost at all time
• Creation of the final, locked-in budget
• Creation of the building timetable and trade schedules
  

Construction Management vs. Contracting

Construction project management is the most economical way to achieve success with your project from a financial, quality and time perspective. It offers unequalled flexibility in participation, and you always know where you stand and where every penny is going.

You are the Boss and You Control the Cost

In a managed project, the general contractor is eliminated from the process. This step along can eliminate the substantial profit that contractors make on each and every sub-contractor and supplier. We take no profit on materials or sub-contractors. And we work for you, not for the trade’s people. We take at least 2 quotes for each and every task. Together we analyze each quote, report on each trade’s capabilities and workmanship, and decide where contracts will be awarded. We secure contractor prices as part of the tendering process. Because our system is totally flexible, you can decide to what extent you wish to participate. For example, you may want to create additional savings by performing some of the work yourself, such as painting, installing finished floors, doing millwork. What’s more, we can show you the savings you can achieve for each and every step, along with the time and difficulty of each task so that you can adequately measure trade-offs between doing it yourself or paying someone to do it. When it’s time to build, the supervision of all sub-contractors will result in a higher quality home because the project manager is your eyes and ears and represents you an a daily basis. Therefore, no one will cut corners on your home. And with our experience we know exactly what’s expected of our sub-contractors.

Straight Talk

There is no such thing as a project without challenges.
With over 250 sub-tasks that make up a project, it is virtually impossible for everything to run perfectly. There will be challenges and demands placed on everyone during planning and construction. Our duty is to eliminate as many of these as possible from the outset, resolve conflicts if they do occur, and keep things running smoothly, on time and on budget. But even the best planned project cannot predict weather patterns, the electrician’s health, or ice storms.

We cannot do 100 homes a year.
We insist on controlling the amount of projects we do on a continuous basis in order to retain our quality and service levels as we are not a huge company. Our jobs are assigned 3 to 6 months ahead of time in order to maximize planning and preparation and create as much savings as possible from the outset. If you are considering us, talk to us as soon as possible to see if there are slots available.

Your project manager will not blow the budget. You Will.
When confronted with so many choices for materials, it may be a challenge to stay on track and on budget. This is why we have established our exclusive Selection Coordinators to assist you throughout the entire project. Consider countertops for example. They range in price from $10.00 per linear foot up to several hundred dollars per linear foot. The difference in a budget can be staggering. And this is just one example. The same applies to kitchen cabinets, lighting, plumbing fixtures, flooring, even the stain finishes applied to wood surfaces. You can rest assured that your Selection Coordinator’s duty is to protect the budget and make you aware of changes that can affect it. For example, if you would like to select a granite countertop instead of a formica surface, Your selection coordinator would let you know the variables involved. You will likely need to reduce your budget elsewhere in the project or increase the overall building budget to accomodate the selection.

If you dislike design and construction or have no time to spend on it, don’t –
We Will.
To get the most home for the money in terms of cost and quality you need to work hard at it. You will be expected to participate in the process fully and you will find it very rewarding and fascinating. By letting the Design Coordinators, along with Bayfront’s technical staff, assist you in the time-line and the decisions themselves, you will come to see just how easy it can be to build a new home.

What is Project Management?

Our unique management system is an end-to-end process that we created to build a home more economically that via a traditional general contractor, and much less risky than doing it yourself from a financial perspective. It covers all the aspects of planning and building a new home – design, budgeting, negotiation of trades and actual construction.

Together we work at meeting your needs and realizing your dream, on time and within budget. Our system features a complete open-book price policy so that you know exactly, and to the penny, where every one of your hard earned dollars is going.

In addition to the previously mentioned services that we provide before a shovel ever hits the ground (the planning and preparation phase), we have the building cycle, in which we:

• Generate building timetable, trade schedules and statement of work
• Site preparation and excavation
• Construction of the home using best practices
• Ongoing site inspections to ensure quality of work and best practices
• Onsite customer “walk through”
• Coordination of all trades, material shipments and municipal inspections, right up to the day you move in
• Ongoing management of schedule, budget and disbursements including approval of invoices from trades
• Immediate response and thrall communication, utilizing our Selection Coordinators
• Adherence to building codes
• Conflict resolution if these should occur (e.g., if bad weather affects schedule)

Our end-to-end process exposes the use of literally every penny, and every minute that will go into building your home on time and on budget. It ensures you receive competitive prices from the best trades, and that your home is built using best practices. And our open-book tendering system eliminates unnecessary mark-ups by contractors.