Budget and Cost Control

We consider your budget to be central to the project.

Clients may fund their projects from a number of different sources whether it be an extension to a mortgage loan, other borrowings or hard earned income. Often it can be a combination of these, but in any case the available funds are finite and in the current climate of market driven property values, spending money on improvements to a home or new build development is an investment decision.

We encourage clients to consider their budget carefully at the outset and discuss with them their motives for undertaking the building project – what they are trying to achieve in investment terms and what financial risks may be involved.

Once an overall budget has been established, this needs to be modified to allow for professional fees, statutory costs and VAT in order for a budget for the construction work to be established. This figure will inform the design approach.

Although there are published cost per square metre figures available for new build and alteration work, as each project is unique it is notoriously difficult to estimate costs at the outset. However, where budget is likely to be critical, we recommend that a cost estimate of the construction work is carried out as soon as an outline scheme has been designed in order that clients can be confident in proceeding to the next stages. This avoids any potentially abortive design work.

Subsequently, and once the design has been fully developed with the client we would produce a set of documents for builders to price. The normal procedure would then be to issue invitations for builders to tender. The parity of the documents ensures that tenders received can be compared ‘like with like’ which avoids any risks that would otherwise be inherent in builders varying pricing methods.

We normally recommend using a form of building contract that is based on a fixed price or ‘contract sum’. This ensures that even though variations to the building work may be agreed during the build, the original contract sum remains unaltered.

During the build, where variations are requested or required, the building contract stipulates that the builder should normally price these variations in advance of carrying out the work. We would check these prices to assess whether they are reasonable and/or acceptable to the client before allowing the builder to proceed. We would keep an on-going record of all agreed variation prices to that at any time during the build, the estimated outturn construction cost is known.

The mechanisms above enable costs to be controlled throughout the project.

Fees

Our services page describes the services we offer for a typical project, although we can tailor these services to meet the needs of any particular project. For instance in circumstances where the client has expertise and/or past experience in project managing building work or where the budget is limited and the client is prepared to take risks, we could limit our services to those considered most cost effective, but we would always point out to clients the risks of commissioning a partial service.

We would discuss these options with the client at our initial meeting and then prepare a services offer and fee quotation to suit.

For most projects our fees are simply a reflection of the services we anticipate undertaking rather than being based on a percentage of the construction works. We have found that this is a charging method that clients like because it is open, transparent and flexible. So for example if a particular service turns out to be superfluous, it can be omitted, likewise if an additional service is required, fees for this can be negotiated.