We watched a great episode of Channel 4's Grand Designs the other day. For those of you who have not seen it, this programme is about people who embark on self build house projects (something that is not that common in the UK). This is the fourth series and all have been interesting. The theme running through all of them is that the builds have ended up being much more complicated than expected, taking way longer than the schedule and costing a lot more (often double!).
Anyway, this house was an eye opener - an education on how it should be done. It was built by a German firm called Huf Haus and they basically prefabricate the entire house in a factory in Germany and then ship it over (it even has the plumbing in the walls, the door handles and locks fitted etc!) What was really amazing, though, was that they send over their own teams of workers at each stage and they work as a cohesive team, each knowing exactly what to do at any given point in time. Thus the house went up exactly on schedule (although there was a mix up by the British couple financing the build on exactly what that schedule was) and exactly on budget. The only thing that threatened to let them down was the concrete and crane being supplied by, no surprises here, British contractors. How embarrassing :-(
Definitely comes under the category of 'I want one of those'. Not just for me either, as the Huf Haus site has buckled under the response to the programme. Ha, didn't plan for that did they!