The Construction Centre

Having had my garden completely revamped last year, I discovered that, despite my own confidence about project management and implementation, there were a few key lessons I learned along the way.

First of all though, I do commend my landscape gardener for a fabulous job and I am very happy with the end result. I was very clear about the design, the garden was to be split into two levels; the lower area for the patio and the upper terrace for a circular area of grass with a tiled border. Fencing was one of the major factors as the upper area would need to be supported by gravel boards to ensure the earth was fully supported. The steps to and from each area were to be wooden sleepers with LED lights to highlight the steps.

I had several meetings with the gardener in the months prior to him starting the job, however the time between meetings and the job starting was about a couple of months. By the time the job was started my gardener was still asking me what products I wanted. Because there was a lot of groundwork to do it was a while before products were going to be needed. The job started at a very fast pace with much of the ground work completed within 5-7 days. I was incredibly impressed with this and this set an expectation for the job to be completed at least within 3 weeks.

It was then that delays began to happen. Having chosen the fencing, patio slabs, front and back doors and relayed my decisions to the gardener it was only once the job had started that he ordered the items. The fencing supplier was local and able to deliver very quickly, which was essential for creating the two height levels of the garden. However then it seemed that everything else halted. The composite door was the very last thing to be installed and from the start of the work it was 2 and half months later. The patio slabs were out of stock and we had to wait 2/3 weeks for those to be delivered. The stable back door was ordered incorrectly and had to be reordered.

As you can imagine from the first week of the job progress being so impressive, to continually be told about ordering delays and errors became very frustrating. However the blame can not entirely lie with my gardener. There were two things which I should have been much clearer about right from the beginning.

Firstly setting out exactly what I wanted whether through printing out products or listing my requirements out. Although my gardener took notes, when it came to the point of ordering, things had obviously been forgotten. I also have to admit to making a couple of changes when the work was going on but which did not impact time frames or work flow. Had I been much more specific and provided my gardener with paperwork about the products I wanted, we may not have had some of the ordering issues which occurred.

My final point is about the ordering of products. Having had our planning meetings back in February and all the necessary measurements taken for my patio and doors, they were clearly not ordered until the job began mid-May. Ordering time frames were not considered by my gardener or the fact that stock might be low. In retrospect I should have chased and checked with him that the items had been ordered in plenty of time.

So my very long winded moral of the tale today is twofold:

• Ensure you know exactly what you want and provide pictures and specific details to your contractor. Keep copies to return and reference back to during the work.

• Where necessary push to ensure items are ordered in plenty of time (pay up front for these if required), this then avoids project delays which can be very frustrating and unnecessary for both parties.

These two points, in my view, are critical to a happy and successful relationship with your contractor for any project you might have around the home.