Notes from the author

This opinionated book on property development is still a work in progress. After completing the first draft of Chapter 6, I realised that writing about my professional life was not going to be an easy task. I wanted to craft what I believe to be an important message to anyone involved in the construction industry, but as with everything in life, it takes time to put something meaningful together.

Initially, my plan was to write a chapter a month, but due to my professional commitments, family and the occasional random task, I soon found myself unable to write at such a speedy pace. As a result, I have no idea when I will be able to complete this project. Rest assured, I hope to get it over the line one day.

With regard to what has been written so far, please note that although I have drawn on my professional experience in writing this work, the end result is a work of fiction. Names, characters, companies, places, events, locations and incidents mentioned in the following chapters are either the product of my imagination or have been used in a fictional manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

In addition, a book written by a property professional is bound to use technical terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader. To complicate matters further, I have also noticed that the construction jargon changes from country to country. For example, in the UK, when the project documentation is sent to the local authorities for approval, means that we have started a ‘planning application’, whereas in Australia it is more common to use the term ‘Development Application’ for the same process. To make matters simple I have used the Australian construction jargon in these pages, since this is the one I am more familiar with. For ease of reading, I have provided a definition of most of the technical terms that I used at the end of this book. Technical terms that have a definition appear capitalised in the text.

Finally, several types of development costs are mentioned on the following pages. Although these are provided to give a sense of the scale for the size of what’s being described, they are by no means an accurate cost, or even an indicative estimate, of the real cost of a similar item. Some of the costs I recall might be a couple of decades old. I have tried to adjust some to today's prices to give a sense of scale, but not always. The currency used is Australian dollars.

At the moment this book is a work in progress and subject to change. In case you would like to be notified when new material is published here, please send an email to helder.cardeira@outlook.com with the subject line “keep me posted” and I will add you to the notification list. Alternatively you can also email me your comments and suggestions, as these are always welcome; and please keep in mind that the text hasn’t been proofread yet.

Thanks for your interest in this project and enjoy the reading.

Sincerely, Helder

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