What we build, and how the work is structured.

Groundworks decides whether everything above it is straightforward or expensive. We do not sub-contract this part of the build. It is our trade — priced by a Quantity Surveyor who has spent many years in it, and supervised by people who have laid the work themselves.

For schemes where the client wants one contract, one programme and one point of accountability. We have delivered construction for local authorities, schools, sheltered retirement housing and commercial clients. The structure that lets us do this credibly is small and direct.

Local-authority work brings its own paperwork — framework procurement, social-value evidence, KPI reporting, end-of-defects inspection. We have the systems in place to meet those obligations without slowing the programme down. We work under JCT Intermediate, Minor Works and Design & Build, as well as bespoke local-authority terms, and we read the contract before we sign it.

Construction is more heavily regulated every year, and the responsibility for compliance sits squarely with the contractor. Our clerical team holds decades of experience, alongside professional membership — CIOB, RICS, MIET and ASFP — which means we can navigate the statutory framework around a build, from the Building Safety Act and the Building Regulations to Approved Document B and the fire-protection regime, and keep the client on the right side of it.

Renovation is not a smaller version of new build — the variables are different, and so is the way you have to price it. Our work has been featured in Good Homes magazine, but the bulk of what we renovate is unglamorous and commercial: caravan-park stock, farm buildings, office blocks, sheltered housing.

The disease in renovation tendering is the price built on assumptions no-one will admit to. We open up where we can before we commit a number; where that is not possible we say so, in writing, against a clearly-scoped provisional sum.

The work that finishes a site — and, increasingly, projects in their own right. We are happy to quote any of these standalone; doing them as part of a larger project means the same crew is already on site, with no preliminaries paid twice.