Funding of an HOA or COA project can be confusing. This post discusses things to consider and provides a basic list of tasks for funding an HOA or COA construction project.
Project Manager vs Construction Manager
What is the difference between a Project Manager (PM) and a Construction Manager (CM)?
This is a question that many clients don’t even consider and don’t fully understand. Throughout the construction industry, you will see these titles used for employee positions. You will also see them used by firms like ours that provide professional services. It’s important to realize there is a difference, especially when you are considering engaging one for a project. Industry veterans may have differing opinions on what each role is and how it applies. This is our take on it:
Project Manager (PM): The person or firm in charge of the management of the entire project. This would include involvement from the initial inception of the project. The PM would be hired and manage the project's initial due diligence, including project feasibility, financial review/forecasting, design stage, reporting, and many more tasks included in pre-construction. The PM would also manage the construction phase of the project. This would include the construction start-up, notices, field observations, payment reviews, monitoring of the contractor’s schedule, project close-out, and warranty review.
Construction Manager (CM): The person or firm in charge of the project's construction management. This would include the construction start-up, notices, field observations, payment reviews, monitoring of the contractor’s schedule, project close-out, and warranty review. The CM typically doesn’t have much involvement in the project setup. Usually, the CM would only be engaged near the end of the Pre-Construction phase when permits were ready to be issued and funding was in place.
Notice that the CM’s role is limited only to the construction phase whereas the PM’s role is more encompassing of all project tasks. Some firms provide both services while others may focus just on the CM portion of the work. This is typical for firms that provide testing services and specialty inspections as part of their offering.
Identifying Project Priority
Holding the role of director on the board includes taking on a lot of duties and responsibilities. And when your property needs to have major repairs completed on multiple building components it can feel overwhelming.
When faced with determining which project to prioritize there are some key questions to consider:
What will be the risks if the project is delayed?
Risk can be defined in many ways but typically it is assessed in terms of safety, money, and time.
Are there life-safety concerns that may pose an immediate danger to occupants?
Live-safety projects should really be at the top of the priority list.
Will deferring one of the projects over another creates a greater cost liability to the association?
The answer is “yes”. Delaying one project to complete another project will add cost but sometimes there is no getting around it.
Is your decision-making process fact-based or emotion-based?
It is very important to take your own personal wants and desires out of the decision-making process and look at the facts.
What facts are you basing the hierarchy of the projects on?
Clients should only use qualified unbiased professionals to inspect, analyze, and discover the facts about the condition of your property prior to making decisions.