A Project Manager: Best Bang for your Buck

When church leaders establish a vision for facility expansion, they typically want to see it on paper immediately. So they hire an architect. The problem with this is that the church is then spending thousands of dollars before they know if the vision is even feasible.

Vision is exciting, but the nitty-gritty stuff is what makes it tangible. There are roughly 10 major steps involved in every church building project, from strategic planning to moving into the new facility. Your first step should be your budget. Knowing how much your church can afford and having a plan will save you from wasting your precious time and resources.

Don’t:

• Hire an architect until you’ve got a budget. The costs to create a fully-functioning church facility go way beyond hard construction costs, and hiring an architect too soon often results in wasted time, money and effort…not to mention disappointment.

Do:

• Clearly define a budget. Identify all costs associated with the proposed project and know how much your church can afford to develop.
• Develop a strategic plan. Know your church’s top needs, goals and priorities and identify specific, ordered steps toward reaching them.
• Hire a project manager with experience in church finance, development sites and their cost, and church design.
• When it comes to church building projects, a good project manager is worth his or her weight in gold. This person or firm can take your vision and conceptually articulate your future facility program (building size, parking and related space configurations, etc.).

A Project Manager…

• Is the orchestrator of the entire project, not just a specialist in one particular component of it (i.e. not a contractor or an architect, who might face conflicts of interest at certain points in the process).
• Understands the tasks and responsibilities for every component of the project.
• Has commercial real estate development experience and has learned from mistakes seen in the past.
• Speaks the languages of the civil engineer, the architect, the contractor and the municipality.
• Knows the right questions to ask and can ask the hard questions you might be uncomfortable asking.
• Is your pushy personality and full-time project nanny, making sure everyone completes responsibilities on time and as promised.
• Can challenge the architect to dig deeper for new creative ideas instead of the same old “off‐the‐shelf” solutions.
• Knows the likely targets for cost-savings.
• Is responsible for the overall schedule to ensure the building is ready for use at its promised completion date.
• Arranges for and oversees the inspecti
  on of the contractors’ work.
• Can insulate you from well-intentioned in‐kind donors who might not be best suited to offer materials or labor.

To sum up: Identify your budget, project costs and strategic plan before starting the design phase. A project manager can help with this as well as each step of the project, and will bring value many times the cost or his or her services.

Development Advisors offers specialized A to Z project management services for Colorado churches seeking to expand their facilities. For more information, contact Scott McLean at scott@developco.com or 303-534-3344 (x 103).