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The Essential Guide » The Planning Stage » Which Trades Services & Suppliers Will We Need to Start Work on Site ?
Which Building Trades and Suppliers will we need to get us started on a Self Build Project?
It's actually time to start building work!
Once you have had Planning Permission granted, lodged your Building Regulations Application, and you have done your “Pre Project Preparation” (see previous chapter), you should just about be ready to get onto site and start building. - At last, - it's all systems go!
Before you get going, however, you’ll need to do a few things:
You will need to contact the Building Regulations Office dealing with your project, to inform them of your intention to start, and on what date (they will need a period of “notice” before you start, the length of which, you will have been given in your application or approval paperwork – normally about a week).
You should also contact the “Dial before you dig” people (who you can find on the internet), or the service providers for gas, water, electricity, telecom, and drainage to make sure that there are no existing services running under your property which you could damage when you start to excavate.
If there were any planning conditions which needed meeting before you start on site, you need to have fulfilled them (some of them may require an inspection from the Planning Officer). - For example, if there are tree preservation orders (“tpo’s”) on any of the trees on the site, you may have to take steps to protect them before you start work. - You would then need to bring in an inspector (maybe from the council, or maybe an “aroboriculturalist”) to confirm that the protection is satisfactory before you start any work on the site itself.
If there are Planning conditions which are required “prior to starting work on site” and you don’t comply with them, you can find yourself in trouble with the Planning Department. – You will be deemed to be “in contravention of the planning conditions”, and in theory you are not allowed to start work until you put matters right.
There are often various important matters which will require attention” before you actually start work, so make sure you get these organised and sorted out before you bring anyone in to start digging!
Who do we need on site first?
You now need to start getting the people organised who are going to get the building work started (If you are using a Project Manager, then this will usually be part of his / her job and you won’t need to worry about it, so for the purposes of this chapter, I am assuming that you are Project Managing things yourself).If you are demolishing a building before you start, the demolition contractors will probably be the first people on site, but you may have had to bring in Health and Safety first to make sure they are happy with the site set up and proposed method of carrying out the demolition (you may need to give them a “method statement” which details the processes that ALL the contractors will be following).
Once they finish their demolition work, then the rubble will need to be removed from site. - Often this work will be included within the price quoted by the demolition company. If not, then the Groundworker, who will be one of the next people to come to site, will normally be able to offer the “clearance” service, which would mean them coming to site a bit sooner.
Assuming you now have a clear site, the ground workers, possibly along with a “Site Engineer” can start the main part of their work.
You will have, between you and the various trades and contractors, by now, come up with a plan of action of who is going to do what and when. - Ideally you should have prepared a “programme of the works” which they will all have been given a copy of (see chapter on “programming for more info). - This programme can now form the basis of you being able to contact everyone you need to, in order to get their start and finish dates set, as well as working out a delivery schedule for the materials.
First job:
The Ground worker will start with what is called the “Site Strip”. This normally involves removing the top soil and weed growth from the “strata” below it.
The top soil (assuming there is any), will normally be stockpiled away from where the building will be, - and away from where you intend to store materials. - This topsoil will be re spread over what will be the garden at the end of the contract.
Sometimes, sloping and uneven sites may also need substantial amounts of earth (spoil) to be dug out and either stockpiled or removed from site before any other works can commence. - If there IS a large amount of spoil to be removed, you may need to bring in a “Haulage Contractor”, who will supply wagons which will be filled by an excavator. – You will then have to pay for each load to be taken to a local tip.
This process of the “site strip” can take anything between half a day and a couple of weeks depending on the individual site conditions. – However, for an average 25m wide by 40m deep site, a day would be about an average time to scrape and stockpile around 6” of top soil.
Setting out:
The Site Engineer may come to site at the same time as the excavation machine.
While the site strip is underway, the setting out can start. The official title for the person doing the setting out is the “Site Engineer”, but on simple house projects, more often than not, one of the ground workers will be able to set out for the foundation dig.
As the site strip progresses over the site, it will free up area where the setting out of the building can be started. – Wooden pegs will be knocked in to the ground with nails in the top to denote the edge of the foundation dig, or the face of the brickwork. – The Excavator Driver will use these for guidance for digging the foundations themselves.
The Engineer (or whoever is doing this job) will spend some time working out getting the building’s “base lines” and the basic “setting out points” established. He will (or at least should!) then put some extra reference pegs in around the perimeter of the site in case any are knocked out as machinery manoeuvres around the site (There is a section later in this guide showing in more detail how the Setting Out Engineer marks out the new building).
Excavation:
Once the setting out is finishes and checked, the excavation can commence:
Along with the excavator, you will normally have a “banks man” on site at this time, provided by the ground worker, The Banksman’s job it is to work with the excavator driver to make sure that he doesn’t “hit” anything he shouldn’t as he digs.
If you checked with “Dial before you dig” people before you started, you should know exactly “what is where” with regards to services on the site and this information should be given to the driver and the banksman so they can watch out for anything they need to as digging progresses.
Sometimes finding a service underground can involve the banks man hand digging a trench so that there is less risk of damage to any service pipes or mains.
(While the site clearance and setting out work is going on you can be taking care of any security issues such as fencing, gates etc. You can either hire fencing in or buy it. Most plant hire companies will stock it and you can often buy it at builders merchants (check the “weekly hire” price against the full “purchase price”. If you have to pay a delivery and pick up charge along with a hire charge, you may find it cheaper to buy, especially if the contract will run into 6 months+). - Whether you buy or hire, you will have to have someone to erect the fencing. You may be able to do this yourselves, or pay the groundworkers to do it for you).
After the site has been cleared of the top soil, and possibly before you start to excavate the foundations, you may find that it is a sensible idea to form up a driveway access from the entrance down to where the building will be positioned.
You could encounter some very poor weather conditions over the months that you will be on site. - Mud can cause major problems on site by ruining materials, and bogging down delivery trucks (especially on sloping sites). - Now is a good time to order some stone (4” “clean stone” makes a good base course), which can be spread over the area which will eventually be your driveway. Having a defined and solid driveway for all deliveries to drive on to, next to which you can offload deliveries onto pallets (which can then be protected with plastic sheeting) will help to reduce wasted materials (and therefore costs) over the coming months.
The stone drive will also help to minimise the risk of vehicles getting stuck. This tone is not usually wasted because, if you locate it in the same position as your permanent driveway, it will usually form up the base of your future driveway.
Security:
Canteens / stores and “lockups” can be ordered for delivery about now, along with the w.c.
Health and safety regulations now require that you offer a certain quality of site accommodation for the workers. This accommodation includes washing facilities (hot running water and a toilet). - There are also stipulations about the size of the site canteen accommodation, depending on how many people are working on the site.
Temporary services:
If you have applied for a temporary service connection for the water or electricity supply, now would be a good time to install it while the digger is working on site. You may need trenches to be dug from the boundary of your plot, across to the position where your temporary stand pipe, or your electricity box will be located.
You can then lay either ducting for the electric cables, or piping for the water supply, within the trench (following the guidelines given to you on the individual service application forms).
If these temporary services will also form part of your permanent “main” supply when the building work is complete, then the trenches and the supply cables / pipes will need to be inspected by the relevant utility authorities before you backfill.
(If you ARE using temporary services, you may need to install a temporary slab, on which to sit a brick or timber lockable box which will house the meters. You will probably then also need to bring in either a bricky or joiner to build the boxes. - To find out the specification of the meter boxes, ask the relevant service provider for details of the standard box which they require).
You will also now need to decide where everything is going to be stored on the site. – If you have followed this guide up until now you will have your site layout designed already, and can now simply put your plan into action.
Your canteen, lock up, w.c etc can be positioned to your plan, and your deliveries can be located in the most efficient pace for quickly and easily getting them to the place where they will be needed for including in the building work.
Deliveries:
Once the site set up is complete, with the access driveway in place and the accommodation delivered, you can then start to bring in the first of the deliveries (usually the bulky stuff like bricks, sand etc).
Note: always order a roll or two of cheap polythene sheeting before you start to get deliveries coming to site. - Lay this both under and over deliveries of bricks / sand / blocks etc. – Even better, try to get hold of pallets to lift the materials so they are not on the ground. - That way if you get a spell of bad weather and the site turns to a quagmire at any time (which it could well do), your valuable materials will be protected.
Foundations:
The ground workers will now normally have a few weeks work ahead of them.
You may have included the brickwork up to DPC (floor slab) in with the groundworker package of work. If so, they will bring their own bricklayers in when they need them. If not, you will need to coordinate between the brickies that you have taken on and the ground workers to get a date for when the foundations will be poured and will be ready for the brickwork up to dpc to start.
Starting Brickwork:
By the time your brickies come to site to start work, you need to make sure you have brought to site everything they will need, including:
· Water
· Sand
· Cement
· Concrete common bricks
· Facing bricks (these may be needed at this stage, especially on sloping sites)
· Blocks
· Wall ties
· Cement admixture
· Rolls of damp proof course (if required – see drawings)
· Insulation (not always needed at this stage)
· Mixer (if you get small “barrow” mixer you may hold up progress, the brickies may work quicker with the larger mixers. – ask them which they prefer. – If they just want the small one it will have to be locked away every night when they finish).
· Power (if required for the mixer of any tools)
This is pretty much all of the first “push onto site” taken care of.
You are now up and running! – Try to build up and maintain the momentum you create at this stage. – If you get a good start but haven’t prepared the next stage of the contract, then things can quickly start to falter and grind to a halt.
All the planning and preparation you did to get you to here, you now need to be repeating all the way through the project for all the different sections or the work. – You need to make sure the planning and preparation is done weeks in advance of the time it is needed, so that you have adequate time to discover any problems and get them sorted before they start to hinder progress on site.
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