Yesterday we had a discussion on Project Management looking at the Schedule of Work and Valuations. Both are related documents and provide a comprehensive overview of construction progress and project finances. In order to become a proper architect, both documents become a way of thinking often more important and instinctive than design drawings and specification lists. If you think about it, it is possible to undertake a project with a very comprehensive Schedule of Work and no drawings.
Normally, the architect prepares the SoW – item by item – and issues this at the tender stage for prospective contractors to fill in their proposed costs. As you can imagine, the amount of detail has to be worded cleverly to avoid extras and misunderstandings whilst keeping the cost down.
Once construction starts, the SoW becomes the basis of the Valuation; at the end of every month the project architect assesses progress on site -again item by item (% completion) – to allow the total value of work done that month to be calculated. The architect then issues a Valuation Certificate to the Contractor permitting them to bill the client for the agreed and valued amount.
At Sharanam, we are the architects-contractor-QS-PM etc and so we have created our own SoWs and Valuations to allow us to assess site progress, control and record finances and value work from multiple perspectives. The full project SoW lists each outstanding component of work, the assigned budget, % design completion and % site completion.
Sharanam valuations are done at the end of each week. Again this is based on the SoW but broken down into labour, material and other expenses so we know exactly how much each item and its various sequences cost and how long it took.
Aurospace ARC 