Project Management
Someone running the fencing package who is not also the one being paid to build it.
Why people bring this to somebody outside
On a large fencing contract the expensive problems are almost never the ones that show up in the final photographs. They are a programme that assumed dry ground, a contractor who was never told about the services under the line, a variation nobody priced, and a handover where the last ten per cent quietly never happens.
I take the fencing package off your desk and run it. That means holding the programme, coordinating the contractor against the other trades on site, checking claims against what has actually been built, keeping the budget honest as variations come up, and walking the job at completion with a defects list rather than a handshake.
For an owner this is usually a small percentage of the contract value, and it buys back the time you would otherwise spend chasing it yourself. For a main contractor it is a specialist package handled by someone who knows what good looks like, which is generally cheaper than finding out at practical completion.
Setting out to a string line. Almost everything that later becomes a dispute is decided in the first hour of a job.
What this covers
Full project management from concept to completion
One person accountable for the fencing from the first sketch to the final sign-off.
Contractor coordination
Sequencing the fencing around earthworks, services and the other trades so nobody is standing on anybody.
Programme and budget management
A programme that survives contact with the weather, and a budget that is reforecast rather than discovered.
Site inspections and quality assurance
Checks at the stages that matter, agreed in advance, while the work can still be corrected.
Practical completion and handover
A documented walk-over, a defects list and a clear point at which the asset becomes yours.
Who this is for
- Councils and large organisations with a fencing package inside a bigger capital project
- Corporate landowners running works on a property nobody from head office visits weekly
- Main contractors who want the fencing subcontract managed by someone who knows the trade
- Property developers coordinating boundary fencing across a staged subdivision
What you get
- A programme for the fencing works, kept current
- Written site reports with photographs after each visit
- Progress claim assessments and variation records
- A practical completion report and defects list
Costed and agreed before I start, never after. A phone call about a straightforward question is usually free.
Often taken together with
Quality Assurance & Inspections
Checking the fence against the specification while it can still be put right.
Read more →Tender & Procurement Services
Getting the job to market properly, so the prices that come back can be compared and relied on.
Read more →Quantity Surveying & Cost Planning
What the fencing should cost, worked out from the job rather than from last year plus ten per cent.
Read more →Paid for the advice, not for the work that follows
I am a certified fencer and I also own a fencing contracting business. That is stated up front rather than buried, because it is the first thing anybody sensible wants to know about an independent adviser.
The rule is simple and it does not bend. If I am advising you, my contracting company is not tendering for your job. You can have my advice or you can have my crew, and you cannot have both on the same project, because the moment you could the advice stops being worth anything. If you would rather have the fence built than the question answered, I will say so and point you elsewhere.
It works the same way in a dispute. I give the same finding whichever party is paying for the assessment, and if your position is the weaker one you will hear that from me first.
The contracting business is Custom Fencing Ltd, which is where the experience behind all of this comes from - and it is disclosed here so that you can check it rather than discover it.
FCANZ Certified Fencer. The Fencing Contractors Association of New Zealand assesses fencers against a practical standard that has to be maintained rather than earned once. The reason it matters here: the advice comes from somebody who still has to go out and build to the standard he is describing.
Tell me what you are trying to work out
Most people get in touch because they have a decision to make and nobody independent to check it with - a tender that does not add up, a fence line that keeps failing, a dispute that has stopped moving, or a property they are about to buy. Describe the situation and I will tell you honestly whether it needs me, and what it would take.
021 614 100- nick@customfenceconsulting.co.nz
- 130 Edinburgh Street, Waikouaiti 9510, Otago
- Monday to Friday, 7am - 5.30pm
Based at Waikouaiti in East Otago and working throughout New Zealand. Site work anywhere in the country; desk work - a tender review, a specification, an opinion on a set of photographs - can start the day you send it.