Peterborough Float Centre Construction - The First Month

It’s been a challenging month in getting ahead of the anticipated delays and troubles in kicking off the construction and renovations of Flow Spa. If you’re not careful and ready to act, every two steps forward will come with one step back. There are many different roles to juggle all at once when in the start-up mode for a business and this month has been a testament to that fact. 

As the progress continues to be made, the pipeline of tasks begins to narrow into a more logical sequence of one after another; albeit with other roles and unexpected decisions still peppered in. 

The two major projects for this month have been finalizing the details of the financing for the business and getting everything squared away for the building permits and starting the renovations. 

As necessary as funding may be for starting a business, there are many steps and a detailed legal process that goes into receiving a loan for a business. Due diligence must be taken by both parties to ensure that a proper agreement has been met; much like the process of lease negotiations. But once the details of the money are out of the way, you can march forward much more efficiently as long as you know who’s doing your work and they are ready to get started with you.

Dealing with the city for the requirements of the building permits has been a more painstaking process. The Peterborough building department is overwhelmed with work and so getting an answer either in-person or online is time-consuming and slows down progress. It’s frustrating when you’re ready to work with someone but need to verify from the city any questions that arise first and it takes two days to get a response. 

There are some strange rules with my business being classified in the large business category despite seemingly falling under the limitations of a small building because of the overall size of the property it is contained in. This not only complicated the requirements as far as what I have to provide for design, but it also increased the costs for permits about four-fold. While this still doesn’t seem logical to me, it is how things are and I just have to move forward from here.  This is just one of the many reasons why you need to have contingencies in your business plan to accommodate unexpected expenses like this.

At least now that I have the answers from the city, my designers are working on what’s required of them and we’re back to making good progress towards getting everything done on time.