Fixed-fee management from first ideas to handover. One person accountable for the programme, the trades, the costs and the paperwork, engaged on a fee agreed at the start that does not climb as the build gets more expensive. Over thirty five years of running private, architectural and ecclesiastical schemes across the South West.
A percentage fee pays the manager more when the job costs more, which is the wrong way round. Ours is a fixed fee agreed at the outset, so the incentive to keep the build efficient sits where it belongs.
Groundworkers, carpenters, roofers, electricians, plumbers, plasterers and specialists brought in individually at trade prices, from a network built over decades in Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and Dorset.
A build fails on sequence more often than on skill. Trades booked in the right order, held to their dates, and re-planned the moment something slips rather than a fortnight later when three other trades have already been affected.
Regular, plain reporting on what has been spent and what is still to come. Where something on site differs from the drawing, you get the cost implication when it is found, in time to make a decision about it.
Planning conditions, listed building consent, building regulations, warranty inspections and CDM duties tracked and discharged, with the certificates collected as the job goes rather than hunted for at the end.
You ring one number. Nobody says it is the other trade's problem, because they are all engaged by the same person and answering to the same programme.
The management of the project: planning the programme, engaging and scheduling every trade, obtaining and comparing prices, ordering and checking materials, running site safety and CDM duties, dealing with building control, the warranty inspector and any planning or listed building conditions, reporting costs to you, and handling snagging and handover. The construction cost itself is separate and is paid at trade prices without a mark-up on top.
A percentage fee rises with the cost of the build, so the person advising you on spending has a direct interest in you spending more. A fixed fee is agreed before the work starts and does not move, which means the advice you get about specification, alternatives and where to save is not quietly working against you. It also makes your own budgeting a great deal simpler.
Earlier than most people do. The decisions that cost the most are taken at design stage, before anybody is on site: buildability, specification, the sequence of consents and which long-lead items need ordering when. Coming in at the drawing stage is where a manager earns their fee several times over. We will still take on a project that is already under way, but the savings available are smaller.
Yes. Client-side project management, where you have a contractor already or want somebody independent watching the programme, the quality and the valuations on your behalf, is a normal part of the work. It is particularly common on ecclesiastical and heritage schemes where a committee needs somebody who understands construction sitting on their side of the table.
As often as the job warrants and at least weekly in writing while there is activity on site, plus a call whenever a decision is needed from you. For PCCs and committees the reporting is written for the meeting cycle rather than in a form nobody can act on.
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 place legal duties on whoever is having the work done, and most private clients have no idea they carry them. On a project with more than one contractor you must appoint a Principal Designer and a Principal Contractor in writing. We are qualified to act in both roles and normally do, which discharges the duty properly rather than leaving it sitting unnoticed with you.
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.