When planning your home remodeling or renovation project one of the main decisions you need to make is who will manage the project. You may have engaged a Designer, and add managing the project to their contract. Alternatively, as is common practice, the main builder may act as the Contracting Manager. Or you may decide to take on the project management role yourself.

Designing a building or renovation is not just about how it will look and function but also what materials are used, when they are needed, ensuring payments are made to suppliers and subcontractors, and quality assurance. If you feel you have the experience to deal with this, great. But be warned, it's not as easy as it may sound. Contracting your own home result in savings of up to 20 percent but can end up costing you more than if you contracted out, if delays, poor engagement and low quality results.

The 10 most common mistakes made by homeowners acting as remodeling and renovation project managers are:

1. Insufficient Planning - the success of your project is probably 80 contingency to allow for alternative materials, increased costs, higher cost for replacement labor etc. It is so easy for $40 here and $25 there to become $3000 over a two or three week project. This is why it is so imperative to update your expenditure every single day so you know exactly where you are. There is nothing that will stop a building project in its tracks faster than subcontractors fear of not getting paid.

2. Poor Materials Management - Time and Materials planning is a big task but it can be very costly not having the right materials in the correct quantity at the right time. In large projects you will engage a quantity surveyor to estimate the material requirements. Some may add a time element to your material requirements plan, otherwise you need to work closely with your builder and supplier to ensure that lead times are built into the delivery scheduling of materials to avoid delays.

3. Not Planning Sufficiently For Contingencies - materials can become unavailable due to warehouses burning down, transport strikes, import problems and even short supply being given to a more valued customer. Labour can become unavailable due to illness, injury or overrun on previous jobs.

You need to have contingency plans to manage this and understand the impact of an alternative choice of materials in terms of the support structure required and finishing. Remember - What is possible in six weeks, on average takes ten weeks and in a worst-case scenario could be twelve to fifteen weeks. You need to be able to reschedule to meet these types of delays.

4. Poor Record Keeping - keep and file verything, and keep records well organised. Your finance provider will most likely require proof of completion at each stage and a summary of expenditure to date, before releasing the next progress payment. If not using finance, good record keeping is just good management. You need to know exactly where you are in terms of time and dollars against the plan specification. This should be the final task you do each night.

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