Six stages. The same on a $180,000 fitout and a $4 million warehouse, because the discipline is what makes the number reliable — not the size of it.
Site assessment, preliminary cost plan, buildability review, programme development, and the authority and certification pathway mapped. The purpose of this stage is to find the expensive surprises while they are still cheap.
Full quantity take-off priced against our 165-code cost framework. Contingency is calculated and carried as a cost. We will tell you what we do not yet know and what it might cost — that conversation is uncomfortable once and useful forever.
Every trade engaged against a written scope of works. Tender analysis, negotiation, and purchase orders with defined terms. The proportion of cost still unpriced is tracked and capped, because unpriced cost is where budgets go to die.
Site management, programme control, trade coordination, and quality assurance against trade-specific checklists. Variations documented and priced in the week they arise, never accumulated to handover.
Monthly: cost to date, cost to complete, margin, and cash — as separate numbers. If a project is drifting, you hear it from us first. We consider a client discovering a cost problem on their own to be our failure.
Practical completion documentation, defects rectification, certificates and warranties, and the statutory maintenance period administered rather than ignored.
If it changes the price, it is in writing before the work happens. This protects you at least as much as it protects us.
Carried as a visible line item. A quote with no contingency is not cheaper — it is just less honest about what is likely to happen.
A problem raised in month two is a decision. The same problem raised in month six is a dispute. We would rather have the awkward conversation while it is still useful.
For larger commercial and industrial projects, pre-construction is usually a separately engaged piece of work with a fee — because it involves real quantity surveying, programme development and authority investigation. For smaller residential and fitout work it is generally carried within the quoting process. We will tell you which applies before we start.
Where prices are volatile, we either lock supply early, carry a stated allowance, or price the item as a provisional sum with a review point. What we do not do is absorb an unquantified risk silently and then discover it mid-project.
Extensions of time and their cost consequences are dealt with under the contract, and the underlying causes are recorded against coded categories as they occur. Because the record is built during the job rather than reconstructed afterwards, the conversation at the end is about facts rather than memory.