FROM FIRST STUDY
TO FINAL HANDOVER.
We design and we build, which means the person who drew the connection is in the same company as the person who has to pour it at two in the morning in January.
First study
Six weeks from the brief to a document that says whether the thing can be built, where, and roughly for how much.
A first study is the cheapest place to find out that the scheme does not fit. We take the brief, the plot and the constraints, and come back with two or three arrangements, a ground risk, a programme envelope and a cost band wide enough to be honest. Nothing is drawn beautifully at this stage on purpose: a beautiful drawing invites a decision the information does not yet support.
- Site investigation and ground risk
- Two or three massing arrangements
- Planning and permit constraints
- Programme envelope with the long leads named
- Cost band, with the assumptions listed separately
- A written recommendation, including the option of not building
Design
Structural, civil and geotechnical engineering carried to the level the next decision actually needs, and no further.
Our engineers sit in the same room as the people who will build it, which is the whole argument for a contractor that designs. Details that cannot be poured in a January night shift get caught at the drawing board rather than on the deck. Where an architect leads, we engineer to their drawings and say early and in writing which parts of the intent the structure cannot carry.
- Structural design in steel, concrete and timber
- Civil, drainage and external works
- Geotechnical design and pile schedules
- Temporary works and demolition engineering
- Clash-resolved federated model
- Independent design check on every load path
Tender and procurement
A priced, scoped and programmed offer inside fifteen working days, with the risk register attached rather than buried.
Most disputes on a construction site are arguments about a sentence written before anyone arrived. So our tenders carry a risk register as a numbered appendix, and each line says who owns it and what it costs if it happens. Clients occasionally find that uncomfortable in week one. They find it considerably less uncomfortable in month fourteen.
- Priced bill against a written scope
- Risk register with named owners
- Subcontract packages and long-lead orders
- Programme with float shown, not hidden
- Value engineering options priced both ways
- Open-book route available on framework work
Construction
Directly employed site management, our own concrete and formwork crews, and a phasing plan built around whatever has to keep operating.
Almost everything we build sits next to something that cannot stop. A station keeps running, a plant keeps making, a town keeps crossing the water. The phasing plan is therefore the first drawing we produce and the last one we change, and every possession, closure and diversion on it is agreed with the operator before it is priced.
- Directly employed site management
- Own formwork, rebar and concrete crews
- Possession and closure planning with the operator
- Temporary works co-ordination on site
- Weekly measured progress against programme
- Subcontractor safety induction on our own ticket
Handover
Commissioning, as-built information and a named engineer who stays reachable for twelve months after the keys move.
A building handed over with a box of unindexed paperwork has not really been handed over. Ours arrives as a structured set: as-builts, test certificates, the maintenance regime for every element with a service life, and the residual risk register. The engineer who signs it is the one who ran the job, and they answer the telephone for a year.
- Staged commissioning with the operator present
- As-built model and drawing set
- Test and inspection certificates, indexed
- Maintenance regime per element
- Residual risk register at handover
- Twelve months of aftercare from a named engineer
A STUDY IS CHEAPER
THAN A REGRET.
A first study runs 6 weeks and is priced as a fixed fee. It belongs to whoever paid for it, including the ground investigation data, and it stays theirs if the next stage goes to somebody else. We have handed over four of them to competitors and would do it again, because a study written to be portable is a study written honestly.
HANDOVER IS
A DOCUMENT SET.
The engineer who signs the handover file is the one who ran the job, and their direct line is on the front of it for twelve months. In that year we will come back for anything the file cannot answer, at our cost, because a defect argued about is more expensive than a defect fixed.
THE SAME FIVE STAGES.
THREE VERY DIFFERENT JOBS.
A library, a lock and a process hall are run by the same discipline and almost nothing else in common. What changes between them is who owns the programme.
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