What counts as a full project build?
Anything where the whole property, or a whole floor of it, changes at once: an extension plus a loft, a house stripped back and reconfigured, or a tired property brought up to a modern standard in one run. The defining feature is not size, it is that you want one firm to own the entire result rather than coordinating it yourself.
Is it cheaper to manage the trades myself?
On paper it can look it, and occasionally it is, if you have the time and the experience to sequence the work and the nerve to hold people to dates. What it usually costs instead is weeks of dead time between trades, work that has to be redone because two firms detailed the same junction differently, and a lot of your evenings. We are honest about it: if you genuinely want to project manage, we will happily just do the building work.
How do you keep the job on programme?
By owning the trades that normally cause the hold-ups. Building, plumbing and the general work are ours, so the critical path is under our control rather than in somebody else’s diary. The trades we do bring in are ones we use regularly and who turn up when we book them.
How is a full project priced?
Staged, in writing, after the drawings are agreed, so you can see what each phase costs and pay against real progress rather than up front. Genuine unknowns, mostly ground conditions and what is behind old plaster, are flagged as provisional sums from day one instead of appearing as a surprise later.
Do we need to move out?
For a full-house project with floors up and ceilings down, moving out for the worst of it is usually cheaper and far less miserable than living through it. Where the work can be zoned floor by floor, plenty of people stay put and we set the programme up to suit that. We will tell you honestly which kind of job yours is.
Who do we deal with day to day?
Us. The same team is on your job from the first visit to the final walk-round, so you are never explaining the history of your house to somebody new.
