The Work | Planning Ahead

It all starts with an idea and an empty space... but quickly the Bricking It apartment starts to take shape.

With more than 20 years in the business and a PhD qualification in 'Risk Management' Dr Phil is super-qualified to run Bricking It.

Dr Phil tells us more about Risk Management, how it is relevant to Bricking It, and what happens when risks are disastrously mismanaged:

What is Risk Management?

Risk management breaks down into three key tasks:

• Identification - what are the potential risks on this job?
• Analysis - what do these risks mean in terms of my schedule? Will they influence the time-scale, cost or the quality of the work?
• Response - how should I respond if something does go wrong? Should I repair, replace or bury my head in the sand!

How is this relevant to Bricking It?

The Bricking It construction project involves 190 activities, and 11 key stages of work, or 'milestones'.

Achieving these milestones involves some level of risk, but clearly some areas of work are more risky than others.

The fitting of the kitchen, for example, is very high risk. It's very expensive, and custom built. If something breaks or is damaged it could set the schedule back considerably. So I'll invest more time and energy into making sure that goes well.

Bricking It is particularly challenging because the flat is a one-off, the layout and design are unique. So if something does go wrong it could be more difficult to put right quickly and within budget.

Obviously you can never avoid risks altogether, but with planning and forethought it is possible to control them.

Any horror stories?

Things can go disastrously wrong if people aren't doing their job properly, especially in the early stages of a job.

Ground engineering, for example, is a vital stage of a job. I know of instances where an entire terrace of houses needed to be demolished because the ground risk had not been managed competently.

Once I was called in to troubleshoot. A new development, an entire village, had almost been completed. But before the job started diesel had been spilt and had soaked into the ground.

When the drainage system was installed the diesel subsequently ate away the rubber seals between the waste pipes. This was a disaster waiting to happen. The seals would have disintegrated, the pipes would have come loose, and the whole system would have become blocked up.

We had to dig under occupied houses in order to replace the whole system. As they say, 'you either make or lose a job in the ground'.

How do you deal with risks in your everyday life?

I do make time to consider my decisions, weighing up the different sides of any problem. But when I make up my mind it's final, and I follow things through to the end.