Cost efficient use of individual trades, fully project managed. Contemporary or traditional, one plot or a small group, taken from the first sketch through to the day you get the keys, with each trade brought in directly rather than bought through a main contractor mark-up.
A main contractor buys the same groundworker, carpenter and electrician you could have, then adds a margin on all of it. Engaging each trade directly under a fixed management fee takes that layer out, and it is the single biggest saving available on a self-build.
The management fee is agreed at the outset and does not move with the value of the build. That removes the awkward incentive built into a percentage arrangement, where the person managing the spend gets paid more the more you spend.
We work to your architect and engineer rather than replacing them, and pick up the buildability questions early: how the frame lands on the foundations, whether the specified window can actually be installed at that head height, where the services genuinely run.
Trades booked in the order the building needs them and held to it, so the plasterer is not waiting on first fix and the roofer is not standing on a scaffold that came down last week. A build that runs to sequence is cheaper as well as faster.
You see where the money is going while it is going, not in a reconciliation at the end. Where something on site turns out differently to the drawing, you hear about the cost implication when it is found and not once it has already been spent.
Inspections booked, sign-offs chased, and the paperwork that a new build needs assembled as it goes rather than reconstructed at the end. Handover comes with a walk round, and the snags get closed rather than listed.
It means one person is responsible for the whole thing and you have one number to ring. We plan the sequence, engage and schedule every trade, order and check materials, run site safety, deal with building control and the warranty inspector, and report the costs to you as they land. You keep the decisions. You lose the job of chasing eleven different people who each blame the other one.
A main contractor prices the work, subcontracts most of it, and adds overhead and profit on top of every subcontractor and every material. Managing the trades directly means you pay the trade price and a fee that was fixed before the build started. On most projects that is a meaningful percentage of the build cost, and it also means you can see exactly what each element cost rather than a lump sum.
For anything requiring planning permission, yes, and you should have one. Our role starts where the design work stops: making the design buildable, pricing it realistically, and then delivering it. We are happy to work with an architect you have already chosen or to suggest people we have worked with in the South West for years.
We can build to a budget if the budget is honest at the start, and the way to do that is to price the design properly before committing to it rather than starting and hoping. Where the numbers do not work, the useful conversation is which parts of the specification to change, and it is a far better conversation to have over a drawing than over a half-built house.
A single detached house is typically twelve to eighteen months on site once you are through planning and building regulations, depending on size, ground conditions and how bespoke the specification is. Groundworks and the shell are reasonably predictable. What stretches programmes is late decisions on finishes and long-lead items such as windows and staircases, so those get pinned down early.
Yes, and it happens more often than you would think. The first step is a proper look at what has actually been built against what was drawn and approved, and an honest account of what needs putting right before anything new goes on top. That report is worth having whether or not you then use us for the rest.
Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire and Dorset, with the towns and villages in between covered as a matter of course. Work further afield in the South West is taken on where the project suits us and we can give it the attention it needs.
Every project starts with a conversation, long before it starts on site.