Undercover Architect

Helping homeowners get it right when designing, building or renovating their family home.

The Team Risk When Relying on Your Project Team Too Much

Are you hoping your project team will solve all your problems when renovating or building your home?

You can expose yourself to big team risks when you rely on your project team too much.

Learn how to manage your risk, find the right project team, and set your project up for success.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 307, and in it, I’m going to be talking about a common and problematic risk when it comes to finding and working with your project team, be it your architect, designer, town planner, builder or other professional.

This is a TEAM RISK that can actually derail projects, and cause a lot of stress and extra expense.

Team is one of my five factors that threads through every decision and step in your project journey. The other four are COST, TIME, DESIGN and YOU.

Renovating and building really is a team sport. And teamwork does make the dream work. 

But believe it or not, you can get into trouble if you rely on your team too heavily, and look to them to have all the answers. 

“But Amelia”, I hear you say … “Isn’t that the very reason I hire them? So that I can rely on them, and they can provide all the answers in my project?”

Well, perhaps. But you don’t want to do it without managing your risk first. And unfortunately, it’s because people don’t manage their risk upfront that their team can get them into so much trouble. We’ll talk more about that in this episode.

Now, let’s dive in!

When it comes to creating your project team for your renovation or new build, it’s both, I suppose you could say, ‘art and science’.

Science, because there’s pragmatic things to check. Things such as …

  • Do they have the necessary qualifications?
  • Are they insured?
  • Do they have demonstrated experience in delivering projects like yours?
  • Do they have the resources and capacity to work with you?
  • Do they tick the boxes in their professionalism, systems and processes?

And then because this is something that is super personal, involves a lot of conversation and collaboration, and you’ll be in each other’s lives for a long time whilst the project is being designed and delivered, there’s also the ‘art’, where you assess things like …

  • Can they communicate in a way you understand?
  • Do they listen to you?
  • Do they have creative ideas that expand on yours?
  • Are they good at supporting you?
  • Are they solutions-oriented?
  • Do they help you feel calm and confident about your project?
  • Are they a ‘fit’ personality-wise?

This can be the challenge when you’re seeking your individual team members. Because someone may be great on the science side of things, but a terrible communicator, or they just don’t ‘gel’ with you.

And then you can also find someone who shares all your values, likes and dislikes, but they’re so disorganised or haphazard in their working approach, that you wonder if they’ll be able to take care of you sufficiently in your project.

I think this is why many will look to the recommendations that friends or even Facebook strangers will make about good architects, designers, interior designers, builders, etc. It can help them feel like the potential professional has passed through someone else’s filter, and apparently done a decent job. And so perhaps it can expedite your selection process.

However, the biggest problem with word of mouth recommendations – especially if you’re getting them from a source who has only done one project – is that the person recommending them may or may not know what they’re talking about. 

This TEAM RISK is this: Relying on your team members too much, and trusting them to fill in the gaps and have all the answers in your project research, planning and execution.

When you don’t manage this risk, and rely on your team members to be the ones to know everything, do everything and tell you anything you need to know, this is what can happen … and these are scarily based on real life examples:

  • You can discover, as you submit your project for required approvals, that the double storey home you’ve been designing for months and months and fallen in love with, no longer meets the local council requirements. Because the builder you were working with didn’t stay across the updates to local regulations.
  • You can find that the title on your property means additional approval requirements that weren’t highlighted to you before you began your project, but now prevent you from proceeding, having already spent tens of thousands of dollars on your design process
  • You’re not advised by your team that you should get a survey of your existing property before designing an extension for the home you’ll be relocating there, and it’s only when the house is relocated, fixed in place, and the builder does a survey at that point, that you discover that the boundary fence is not on the boundary, and your home’s position is nowhere near being complaint
  • The design you’ve had done doesn’t actually fit on your site, but you’ve paid the designer tens of thousands of dollars and they’re now long gone (believe it or not, this has happened to someone who got in touch with me)
  • You can not be made aware of specific overlays on your property that mean a significant number of changes to your design (which was already finalised an submitted for approval), and a lot more professional fees to incorporate the required changes
  • And the list goes on.

What actually happens when you’re relying on your team to fill all the gaps and have all the answers is that you outsource YOUR AGENCY in your project.

And that means you may not have the knowledge, ability or awareness to spot when something is going array, when steps aren’t being followed, or gaps in the process are occurring.

You assume they have everything in hand, because that’s what you hired them to do. But assumptions are big holes that money and time can fall into unfortunately. 

And assumptions can get you into big trouble in your project.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

RESOURCES

Access the special offer for podcast listeners to PROJECT 101 by heading to www.undercoverarchitect.com/project

Here’s some resources to review …

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my flagship online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder 

Access my free online workshop “Your Project Plan” >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/projectplan

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