For owners who don’t live on Mallorca year-round, project management is the difference between a build that arrives on time and on budget and one that quietly drifts into year four. We act as project manager and architect simultaneously — Dirección de Obra in Spanish terminology — so there’s one point of accountability for the entire build.
What project management actually means
For a typical villa or new finca build, project management is a continuous activity from the moment construction starts to the day you receive the keys. That includes:
- Tender management — preparing the bill-of-quantities, soliciting bids from 3–5 contractors, normalising them so you can compare like-for-like, selecting and contracting with the chosen contractor.
- Weekly site supervision — physical site visits, photographic logs, written reports, defect lists, change-order assessment.
- Subcontractor coordination — landscapers, pool specialists, kitchen and bathroom suppliers, smart-home installers, security and AV — each with their own delivery windows that need sequencing.
- Budget management — change-order discipline, invoice review against bill-of-quantities, monthly financial reporting.
- Quality control — material specifications, finish samples, snagging during and after construction.
- Regulatory closure — Final de Obra inspection, Cédula de Habitabilidad, registration of the as-built version with the Catastro and Registro de la Propiedad.
Why an architect-as-PM works better than separate roles
Many international owners reflexively want two separate people: an architect for design, a project manager for construction. On Mallorca, this rarely works as well as a unified role. Three reasons:
- Design issues that surface during construction — and they always do — need to be resolved by the person who made the original design decision, not by a PM trying to interpret it. With a unified role, the answer arrives in hours, not days.
- Spanish construction culture is built around the Director de Obra figure (the architect signing the construction). Adding a separate PM on top of this can confuse contractor accountability and slow site decision-making.
- Savings from coordination — most of the soft savings on a build come from sequencing decisions correctly (e.g., specifying lighting circuits before drywall goes up, choosing kitchen layout before plumbing rough-in). A unified architect + PM has these decision moments on a single dashboard. Two roles need to schedule them and that adds friction.
Cost
Project management is typically part of our overall architect-of-record engagement for a fully-integrated service. We don’t bill PM separately on top — the unified-role efficiency is part of why our engagement structure works. We also don’t take commissions from contractors or material suppliers; our incentive is aligned exclusively with you.
Get in touch
If you have a build coming up and you’d like a conversation about how project management could work in your specific case — contact us. We’re happy to talk through your situation before any contract conversation.