Frequently Asked Questions
Hopefully any questions you have will be answered below. If not, please get in touch at the Contact Us page.
HOW WILL I AS THE CLIENT, KNOW THE COSTS ARE ACCURATE?
Your estimate will be prepared with 10 solid years experience as an estimator and builder delivering residential projects. A lot was learnt over the years and every time there was a lesson to be learnt, the price list and estimating checklist was updated to ensure learning from things on site. Prior to this, I have 10 years experience as a carpenter running my own sub-contracting business. So you can be confident because you know you’ll be engaging a carpenter turn builder with 20 years total experience, the perfect combination for a good estimator!
WILL WE MEET TO GO THROUGH MY ESTIMATE IN DETAIL?
Yes, we look forward to meeting all of our clients! This is a very valuable and important part of our collaboration. It takes about an hour to go through a job and we’ll need to sit down, turn the phone off and go through your project in detail. This will help you to get a good understanding of the detail without sitting down for hours on end putting your estimate together. From here, we can work on anything that needs to be clarified or any revisions that need to be done. Please note that all meetings are online.
WHAT DOES myProject Price NEED FROM ME?
The main thing is a commitment to get involved in the project and not just handover your estimate to us without reviewing and getting to know the details. Other things that would be useful can be site photos, project specifics and a scope of works. They aren’t essential because we will work through the estimate together which will provide a lot of opportunity to discuss the areas and scopes of works that are still TBC.
Additionally, when going with The Full Tender Estimate & BOQ we will need a list of your preferred trades and suppliers. We will maintain these contacts and we can update them as we work together into the future.
CAN THE BUDGETS BE IMPORTED INTO MY COST RECORDING SOFTWARE?
Yes, we can export everything in the form of an excel spreadsheet to be easily imported into your cost recording/project management software and we can help with this.
CAN YOU USE THE COST CENTRES THAT SUIT MY SYSTEM?
Yes, if the cost centres you use are different to our template, we will prepare your estimate so that they match your cost centres which makes it easy for you to record costs and issue purchase orders.
WHAT WILL I RECEIVE FROM MY PROJECT PRICE?
You will receive the The Preliminary Cost Estimate & The Full Tender Estimate & BOQ as per the examples available to download as well as the trade quotes (The Full Tender Estimate & BOQ only). As well as that you will get strong commitment, as many meetings needed to make you comfortable and to ensure you have a thorough understanding of your project and support to help making the sale and getting the contract signed.
DO I RECEIVE A COPY OF THE TRADE QUOTES?
Yes, absolutely but please note that is only available with The Full Tender Estimate & BOQ option.
CAN I GIVE FEEDBACK?
Absolutely, please let us know how your project is going and feedback is extremely valuable. We want to build long lasting relationships and we love feedback so we can improve our service for you and continue working into the future.
CAN THE DOCUMENTS BE CUSTOMISED TO SUIT ME?
Yes there are various options that BOQ documents can be exported to. We can discuss this in an online meeting to work out a way that you prefer.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY LOW RISK?
We will thoroughly cover all aspects of your project to ensure that the scope of work is captured throughout the specification. We will provide a thorough exclusions list that will cover you for a lot of the unknown items that can arise on site. Additionally, it is in our nature to risk assess all projects as the estimates get prepared. We think, ‘how is this going to be built’ not just put together the quantities.
HOW ARE PRELIMINARY ESTIMATE COSTS CALCULATED?
Preliminary budgets are based on sq. meter rates where applicable based on real costs of all the projects that we work on.
HOW LONG DOES AN ESTIMATE TAKE TO PREPARE
Prelim estimates take about 7 days. Full Tender Estimates take about 2 – 3 weeks but please get in contact to discuss current lead times.
HOW DOES MARKUP AND MARGIN GET CALCULATED?
It’s best to get in touch to discuss this one so we can come up with a way that suits your business.