When we starting our discussions with the FA we said that we wanted to improve the quality of the pitches, fence off the site and add another pitch.

The cost of fencing was £40k but none of the organisations that we approached were really interested in supporting this type of work.

Without fencing we couldn't start the pitch improvements so we somewhat thwarted before we had really started.

The FA said that we needed toilets and dressing rooms and encouraged us to apply for funding to cover this. We applied and got it.

We were then encouraged to apply for further funding to develop the pitches - applied and received.

To get one award is an achievement, to get two is incredible.

We thought that the cost of the works would be around £250k and we had over half.

The FA asked to put together a presentation and in July 2014 we went to Birmingham County FA's head quarters and met with the FA and the Football Foundation. Even as we arrived in the car park we were receiving quotes and changing the presentation to reflect the late additions.

I do a lot of presentations through my day job but the reaction to this one was a little surreal.

We got a lot of positive and complimentary comments about what we had achieved to date, the presentation went well, but there was a lot of huffing and puffing around the modular changing rooms that we were proposing. 

There was a chap from the Football Foundation who was asking some challenging questions about planning consent, building regulations and costs, and he really didn't look impressed. He kept tapping figures into his calculator and talked to the FA about other funding streams.

After a while the panel that we were presenting to agreed that the project was too small, it needed to be more ambitious, future proof (bigger than the club's current ambitions). It's the first presentation that I've made where someone has turned around and said 'it's great but we want you to have much more'.

The FA suggested that we could apply for a grant of £10k that could be used to employ a team of design consultants who would also deliver the project if we were successful in obtaining the necessary funding.

We applied for the £10k, received it and started dialogue with a company called Steve Wells Associates - SWA.

From October 2014 to January 2015 we had regular calls and meetings with SWA and pulled together various plans and costs for the site. The guys at SWA are very thorough and we spent hours preparing income and expenditure forecasts to support our project plan.

The format that the Club presented it's income and expenditure plans has now been adopted by the FA as best practice!

Running in parrallel with the project plan preparations was the planning application. Alethea Wilson from the Council was superb in helping to push this through.

In February the project plan - total cost £485,000 - and the planning application was submitted to the Football Foundation and North Warwickshire Borough Council.

Once again we were successful on both fronts and in May we received confirmation that the Premier League had agreed to give us £330,000 towards the project.

Work starts on Tuesday 16th June and is expected to be completed by November 6th 2015.