Before you commit to anything
We will come and look, ask about the things that are never on the drawings — access, the riser, the party wall, where the skips stand — and come back with a priced proposal and a programme. The visit is where the real constraints usually appear, and they are cheaper to find then than in month three.
What an estimate from us contains
- An elemental cost plan: substructure, structure, finishes, services and external works each priced, rather than one figure at the bottom of a page.
- Quantities measured from the drawings, with rates built from current subcontract prices and the assumptions written beside them.
- Preliminaries priced against a real programme — scaffold, hoarding, welfare, supervision, and the time the job actually takes.
- A risk allowance you can see, kept separate from the rates, for the questions a survey has not answered yet.
- Exclusions in plain terms, so you know what is not in the number.
Options, not a single answer
Most decisions at this stage are trade-offs: dig the basement now or leave the slab ready for it, keep the building in use or empty it and finish sooner, specify the stone or the porcelain. We price the options side by side and say what each one does to the programme, because the cost of a decision is rarely only its cost.
Later in the job
The same people carry it on. Tenders compared like for like, with each contractor’s qualifications and exclusions listed rather than averaged away. Variations priced before they are instructed wherever that is possible. Valuations, cost reports and the final account. We run the same exercise on our own development at Altea Hills, where the money at risk is ours.
