On most projects the accommodation is the last thing planned and the first thing that goes wrong. The programme, the plant and the labour all get scheduled properly. Where twelve people are going to sleep for the next four months gets sorted the week before, by whoever has the least on.
It is worth doing better than that, and not because of the money. A crew that is sleeping badly, eating takeaways every night and driving forty minutes each way is a crew that is not at its best, goes home at weekends when it was not planning to, and quietly decides not to volunteer for the next one.
This is how to plan it properly: what to work out before you ask anybody for options, how to decide whether the crew shares, the vehicle questions people forget, and a timeline that starts earlier than you think.
Start from the programme, not the postcode
The instinct is to search for somewhere near the site and work forwards from whatever comes up. That gets you a list of places that exist, which is not the same as a list of places that work.
Start at the other end. Look at the programme, work out who is on site in which weeks, and write down what those people will actually need. The accommodation requirement falls out of that, and it is usually more specific and easier to solve than the vague version.
It also means you are asking suppliers a real question. “Somewhere for eight people near Peterborough” gets you a shrug. “Six trades on a five-day pattern from the ninth of March for about ten weeks, two vans, site is the north of the city” gets you an answer.
The four numbers that decide everything
Almost every accommodation decision on a project comes back to four things. Get them written down and most of the rest follows.
Where, from the site postcode outwards
Not the town, the site. Twenty minutes each way is forty minutes a day for each person, and four hours a day across a crew of six, so it decides which accommodation is actually suitable rather than merely nearby.
When they arrive, and whether they all arrive at once
Crews rarely land together. A first fix team of two in week one and eight more in week three is a different requirement from ten people on day one, and it is worth saying so up front.
How many people, and who they are
Numbers alone do not describe it. Six people who have worked together for years and six strangers from three subcontractors are the same number and a completely different accommodation problem.
How long for, honestly
Including the extension everybody privately expects. The stay booked as four weeks is very often the stay that runs to nine, and a booking made on the honest number is easier to hold together than one made on the optimistic one.
Those four are enough to get real options back from anybody worth dealing with. Everything else is refinement.
Sharing a property, or separate rooms
This is the decision that gets made by default more often than any other, usually on cost alone, and it is the one the crew will have the strongest opinion about. It is worth ten minutes.
One property for the crew when
- The crew already works together and would rather cook and eat as a group than sit in separate rooms.
- The stay is long enough that a kitchen and a washing machine start to matter, which is usually past about a week.
- Finance would rather see one invoice for a property than a pile of individual room bills.
- People are on the same shift pattern, so nobody is coming in at two in the morning past somebody else's door.
- The budget is per property rather than per head, which changes the arithmetic as the crew grows.
Separate rooms when
- The team is drawn from different employers and nobody has agreed who is responsible for what.
- Shift patterns clash, particularly where nights and days are running on the same job.
- Somebody has a genuine reason to need their own space, and it is not your business to interrogate it.
- The stay is short enough that the shared kitchen never gets used anyway.
- People are arriving and leaving on different dates, so a whole property would sit half empty.
If you are genuinely unsure, ask the people who are going. It takes one message, it is the only way to find out, and it makes the answer theirs rather than something that was done to them.
Vehicles, tools and parking
This is the section that gets skipped and then causes the first phone call. Parking is not a detail on a job with vans on it.
- Say what the vehicles actually are. Parking for four cars and parking for two vans with racks and a tipper are different questions with different answers. Suppliers can only solve the problem you describe, and "we will need parking" describes almost nothing.
- Ask where tools go overnight. A van left on a street with tools in it is an insurance conversation waiting to happen. Off-street parking, a locked yard, or a plan to empty the van each night: pick one before the first night, not after.
- Check the height restrictions. Barriers, undercrofts and residents' car parks catch out anyone arriving in a Luton or a tipper. It is a two minute question and it has ruined a first evening more than once.
- Work out who is actually driving. If four people travel in one van, four parking spaces is the wrong answer. If they all drive separately because they live in different places, one space is the wrong answer.
A mobilisation timeline that starts earlier than you think
None of this needs a system. It needs somebody to do these eight things in roughly this order.
- As soon as the job is likely: give a rough location, headcount and duration to whoever will arrange the accommodation. Not a booking, a heads-up.
- When the programme firms up: confirm the site postcode, the real start date and the shift pattern.
- Before you commit: settle parking, whether the crew is sharing, and what happens if the dates move.
- Two weeks out: confirm names, arrival dates and anything that would rule a property out.
- The week before: send arrival instructions to the people actually travelling, not just to their manager.
- Day one: check somebody has arrived and got in. A key that does not work at ten at night is a small problem that becomes a large one.
- Week three: ask the crew how it is going, before they tell you the hard way.
- As soon as the programme slips: raise the extension. Early is cheap and late is not.
The first item is the one people skip, and it is the one that buys all the options. A heads-up costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Items four to seven have their own list, because that is where most stays quietly go wrong: the checklist for the week before arrival. And for the part that comes after, read what to do when the dates move.
Common questions
How far in advance should accommodation for a project team be arranged?
As early as you have a rough location and a rough headcount, even if the dates are not fixed. An early conversation costs nothing and does not commit you to anything, and it means the person arranging it is looking while there are still options rather than after the programme has been signed off. A late request is worked from a shorter list.
Is it better to book one property for the whole crew or separate rooms?
It depends on the crew rather than on the numbers. A team that already works together, on the same shift pattern, for a stay measured in weeks, is usually better off in one property with a kitchen and a washing machine. A group drawn from three different subcontractors, on clashing shifts, often is not. Ask the people travelling before you decide for them.
What happens if the crew size changes after the booking?
It changes on most projects, so it is worth asking how a supplier handles it before you book rather than after. What matters in practice is how much notice they need, whether the same accommodation can flex, and what happens to the rate. Raise a likely change as soon as you suspect it, because the answer is almost always better with three weeks of notice than with three days.
Who should be the point of contact during the stay?
One person on your side and one on the supplier's, agreed before anybody arrives. The failure mode is a crew member reporting a broken boiler to a site manager who forwards it to a procurement inbox that nobody reads until Monday. Make sure the people actually staying know who to ring and that the number works out of hours.
Do you cover sites outside Peterborough?
The accommodation we arrange is in Peterborough and the surrounding area. If your site is somewhere else, send the requirement anyway and you will get a straight answer rather than a booking nobody can look after properly.
In short
Work out where, when, how many and how long before you ask anybody for options. Decide sharing on the crew rather than on the spreadsheet. Describe the vehicles properly. Start the conversation as soon as the job looks likely, not once it is signed.
If you would rather hand the whole thing to somebody, that is what we do. How it works covers the process end to end, and who we help covers the situations we see most often.
Mobilising a crew soon?
Send the site postcode, the start date, the headcount and roughly how long for. That is enough to come back with real options, and a rough version is fine.
Tell us about the vans at the same time and you will save a phone call. If we cannot cover it, you will get a straight answer rather than a holding email.