Bristol 27

Construction Update

Happy to report that the duplex remodel described in this post is complete.  In a short time, I’ll be able to turn more attention back to boat construction.

There’s still a lot of boat work to do and even with a huge task list, I know the boat has never been closer to being in the water.  Here’s a few images that try and encapsulate the status of the boat project as of today:

Overview of the exterior of the boat, looking aft. You can also see the boat shed covering the boat and work area.

Exterior view looking forward and showing sidedecks and cockpit.

Looking down from the cockpit, through the companionway and into the saloon area.

Looking forward through the saloon and into the v-berth

Looking aft, through the saloon and at the galley and nav-station areas.

Image of the cockpit from looking through the companionway. The motor well is all ready for a motor!

A spreadsheet with all the projects left to complete on the boat build will guide the construction process from here on out.  Here’s a sample section of that spreadsheet:

Image showing one area of the project tracking spreadsheet.  The projects are sorted by “first to be completed” (aka do project on line 1, then 2, etc.).  The spreadsheet can be sorted in a variety of ways (due to use of categories) and the estimated hours are clearly shown for each project.

One feature of a project spreadsheet is that it’s easy to tally numbers.  Each project has been given an estimated number of hours to complete.  Having these hour numbers are helpful for planning purposes, and showing them in aggregate helps visually demonstrate the longer/bigger portions of the project.

Whenever estimating the number of hours to complete a project, I take my initial time estimate, then apply a multiplier of 1.5 or 2 times.  Here’s the formula used for all the hours in my project spreadsheet:

estimated (est.) # of hours the project could be completed on my best working day * 2 = est. time (hrs)

Using this formula, an overall timeline showing the # of days it will take to complete each phase of the project was created.

A key note about this timeline is that it assumes that only 6 hours of work would get done each day.   This is surely a tricky number and there’s a lot to discuss on the topic of productivity, but 6 hours seemed like a good average.

Expect this timeline to be erratically incorrect in the coming months.  Even still, it’s the best estimated timeline available at this time.  For example, time is being spent to prune down the total number of projects, which could shorten the number of days by an order of magnitude.

One Response to Construction Update