Empowering people to build self-build homes

We’ve supported a number of self build clients to take on a greater role in the project management of their self build home.

In many cases, when clients come to us with their brief to build a new home, they want to be heavily involved in the design process, and we therefore work collaboratively to develop a design that meets their brief and aspirations. When it comes to construction, however, we find that clients mostly want to keep their involvement in the day to day management of the construction process to a minimum. In a traditional build, we enable them to find a contractor they can trust, and who can take on the role and responsibility of building the project. We can also act as Contract Administrator to ensure that their home is built as per the drawings and specification, at a quality they are expecting, and in line with a fixed cost and timescale, giving certainty to the client.

But this is not the only route - in many such projects we have instead supported clients to take a more active role in their project when it’s on site. There are a variety of reasons for this; clients might have the skills and experience for this to be an accessible route for them, or they might have the desire to be more involved in a process which can be rich and rewarding. In some cases the cost of the build is beyond clients’ budgets, but they have the time resources available to take on the work themselves.

We can empower our clients to take on this role in their self-build journey. Whether that’s through designing a construction approach which suits a self-build process, or being on hand to assist in an ad-hoc manner once the project is on site. Taking on the role as an inexperienced client is by no means an easy route! The self-built project below in Portishead took much longer than it might have done if built with a single main contractor. Additionally, while the attraction of making a budget go further through self-build is a strong motivator, it’s not without risk - while it might enable clients to find much needed cost savings, there’s no guarantee that these savings will last - if materials or labour costs increase over time, then the overall construction costs can go up.

Despite these factors, it can be a rewarding and life-changing journey which gives a complete sense of ownership of the project. If you would like to discuss your own self-build project, we’d love to hear from you! Email us at info@barefootarchitects.co.uk, or call 0117 9070971 (Bristol, or 01803 446 040 (Devon).

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