A first figure comes from the brief and the site, not from a rate card. Once the drawings and a site read are in hand we price the work in activities, and the estimate arrives broken down so every line can be argued with.

Everything the drawings describe at the time of pricing — materials, labour, plant and management — set out as line items. Anything the drawings do not yet carry is named as an exclusion rather than hidden in a percentage.

Through a written change process: a variation is priced and agreed before the work moves, and the budget ledger is updated the day it is. No change reaches the invoice before it reaches the paper.

Yes — most of our work starts from a designer's own set. We read the drawings on site before we price them, and anything the two disagree about is settled by the ground rather than the paper.

It depends on what the site asks for. The setout, levels, access and the sequencing of trades are planned before the first pour, and that planning period is priced into the programme rather than borrowed from it.

We walk the project through the approvals its drawings need and document what each one required. What we never do is quote the outcome of an authority's decision in advance of that authority.

Every delivery is checked against its order and logged with the location it was used in. A material that arrives off-spec is quarantined and replaced, not argued with on site.

Inspection happens at the points where covering work makes it expensive to revisit: formwork before the pour, openings before the frame is closed, and services before the boards go on.

Up front, yes — alternatives are priced against the specification before ordering so the substituted item and its consequences are visible in one place. Substitutions after delivery are a different conversation.

The programme answer is the one the price is built on: an activity list with durations and the trades sequenced against it. A delivery date without that sequence is a hope, and we do not quote hopes.

Weather risk sits in the programme explicitly: the activities that need dry ground are scheduled for the season and the buffer is named. When a delay is real, the recovery plan and its cost are on paper the same week.

At the point the last pre-start dependency — approvals, materials with lead times, the access agreement — is closed. We hold the start date genuine by fixing dependencies, not by quoting a date early.

The handover file lists who to call for what, and the defects period is named in it. Anything that fails because it was not built to the drawing inside that period is corrected by us, recorded like the build was.

Through the contact named in the handover file, so the request lands with someone who can send the right trade rather than with a general inbox. Every visit is logged against the item it closes.

For structures we built, yes — planned inspection cycles drawn from the same activity list the build ran on. Terms are agreed per structure rather than per square metre.

Yes, and the sequence is planned around the household or the trading day: noisy work scheduled, spaces handed over floor-first, and the site left safe to live or trade beside every evening.

Matched where a match exists and called honestly where it does not — old brick and aged plaster are sampled, and the nearest honest match is agreed with you before it is installed.

By treating them as findings, not surprises: the opening reveals what is there, the discovery is photographed and priced, and the change follows the same written process as any other variation.