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65 MIN READ TIME

Avoiding project pitfalls

Oakwrights (www.oakwrights.co.uk) create oak frames offsite using precise measurements and expert craftsmanship, allowing the company to provide high quality homes with little risk of delay

To paraphrase the author Terry Pratchett, houses get built when a great number of things amazingly fail to go wrong. Aside from running my practice, I have had the privilege of meeting many people embarking on their self build journeys and hear of the problems they have encountered on the way. I adjudicate construction disputes, as well, and help the Architects Registration Board deal with complaints filed against architects, so I probably know more about projects failing than most. My conclusion from this experience is that the best way to approach any building scheme is to identify all the most likely and potentially disastrous risks right at the start and implement a strategy that will reduce or eliminate them. The alternative is to just avoid thinking about them altogether and hope everything will be okay, which places rather too much in the hands of lady luck. The list of perils you could encounter is a long one and would easily fill a book, so I have picked just a few to warn you against.

Inaccurate measurements

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Build It
December 2019
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