A Brief History
Jim Harwood
Jim Harwood, the MD of Cranmere Developments, has over 25 years experience in house building. He set up his own business six years ago and has brought together a highly competent and successful team. The company, which continues to grow at a healthy rate, built a total of four detached houses, two office blocks and a very large mansion during 2006.
Before setting up his own business, Jim worked for a wide variety of construction companies, ranging from small businesses, where he was responsible for almost everything through to very large companies, where he learnt the latest methods in construction and project management. His initial grounding was as a trainee in a large family run construction company, where he worked through every department, including quantity surveying, planning, engineering and site management.
Jim always says of his career to date "If you can name a job in the construction industry, then I've done it", from driving machinery to running stores, being a finishing foreman, a site engineer, a site manager and a project manager.
Jim found that running a building site in a smaller business meant virtually doing everything yourself, and in some depth. There were no surveyors, no planners, or anything of the other infrastructure usually found in larger companies. You were expected to place the orders yourself as well as organise the selection and supervision of the subcontractors and the materials. It felt like being a jack of all trades at the time, but it gave him a unique insight into every aspect of the business, which he now finds of immeasurable value in running his own business.
Jim had the initial inspiration to start his own company when working for Charles Church many years ago. At the time, it was a very progressive and go ahead company and was leading the way in modern house building. The knowledge of how Charles Church started out and what he achieved in a relatively short time provided the incentive to do the same. Jim then moved on to Berkeley Homes, which was another inspirational and progressive company. Their houses were of such good quality and design that they virtually sold themselves.
This background formed one of Jim's basic beliefs, which is that you should never build something that you would not be prepared to live in. He has stuck to this belief and has never built a house that he would not be delighted to have as a home.
Jim has also never forgotten about the need for quality, which was instilled in him during his formative period in the industry. If something goes wrong several months after the property has been occupied, not only it can be very expensive to fix; it can also cause the client considerable aggravation.
When running your own business, the buck stops with you and you have to stand by what you build, so Jim's philosophy has always been to get right the first time.
Building the Business
Cranmere Homes began to emerge about six years ago, following many months of research, writing business plans, meetings with banks and other potential investors and land agents. 'To make sure that the business was well founded, we examined and priced up dozens of new building sites to see how viable they might be.'
We pursued countless opportunities, but getting started without an established reputation proved fairly difficult. The breakthrough came when Gilbert Homes awarded us a contract to build five houses over a twelve month period. Since then, we have established an excellent reputation for quality work completed on time, and we have built numerous houses for other companies.
Despite growing the business by contracting work for others, our main objective had always been to build properties on a speculative basis. This proved to be an even more difficult and expensive exercise.
Finding the land and the opportunities was the first major hurdle. Green field sites are virtually non-existent, so most house building is on brown field sites, and most of these involve the replacement of larger older properties with several smaller properties that make better use of the land. With all manner of inherent problems caused by previous uses of the land, particularly in respect to contamination, whatever the cause, this is never straightforward.
Even these sites are difficult to find, so we work closely with land brokers, such as Faversham Brooke, and Cricketts. They are very professional and have many good contacts, and have proved to be an unequalled source of suitable sites.
The other major hurdle is getting planning permission. Building on brown field sites does help, because they are a lot less contentious, especially as they are normally already within developed areas. But there are many pitfalls; such as 'ground nesting birds' which has become the bane of planners in the Thames Valley area recently.
The Team
Led by our architect, we have a top class team on the planning side, which has led to many successful approvals. Our architect worked for both Octagon and its forerunner for many years. His knowledge of planning procedures and approvals processes is second to none and has achieved a very high success rate. His layouts are superb and his design judgement is beyond question.
Converting the architect's plans into working drawings is equally important, not only for getting approval for building regulations; but to enable the properties to be built the way I want them to be. This work is led by a specialist in the production of working drawing schemes, who obtained most of his grounding while working for Berkley Homes and Wates.
The quality of his drawings is absolutely outstanding and we never want for information on the finer points of exactly how to build a home. Nothing is left to chance. It also presents a very professional image to both the NHBC and to the local authorities, which simplifies and eases the whole assessment and approval process.
The last twenty years have seen dramatic changes to the way in which we build homes, although they might look the same at first glance, internally and externally, what goes on behind the scenes is considerably different. The range of products available to us is vast, it is therefore very important to use the right combination.
You simply cannot say 'I will use the best of everything!' all you would achieve is to build a product that nobody could afford to buy. Finding the right balance of performance and functionality is essential; we have refined, and indeed continuously do so; our product to the point where we have achieved an optimum balance of build ability, performance and function with minimum maintenance; not just for us, but for our 'end users'.
Building Opportunities
We favour new build the most, preferably detached houses, although we are also happy to get involved with conversions and refurbishment; the latter is often more costly though, due to the constraints of 'listed buildings' on the use of materials and techniques.
Most new buildings these days are on brown field sites, which normally take the form of larger and older properties that can be replaced with several smaller modern properties. The return on the initial investment can be quite significant, given the relatively short turn around time, but it is a margin and can be eroded very quickly if care is not taken when planning the project.
Our preference is, for us to make the assessment of the land and develop our own scheme, and then follow it through to 'full planning permission'; so often schemes are brought to us that already have planning obtained, but unfortunately these sometimes leave much to be desired; and many quite simply would not yield the profits necessary to allow us to take the project on.
With our team conducting the design and planning, we know that we are working on a viable scheme from the outset. We will be promoting a project that not only makes best use of the land, but that will provide good balanced accommodation for our purchasers, allows us a chance to build it without compromise; and also has the necessary kerb side appeal to allow us to successfully market it when ready and get potential purchasers interested.