How to choose a builder here

The eleven questions

Ask all of them. Note not just the answer but whether they have thought about it before.

1. "Where does vehicle access end for this property, and what does that do to the price?" A contractor who has not walked the route is quoting from a plan. The answer should be specific and it should be a significant part of the conversation.
2. "What would you open up before giving me a fixed price?" On any renovation the answer should be a list. "We don't need to" means the price is either padded or a trap.
3. "What would you refuse to quote without seeing?" A good answer names things — behind the render, under the floor, the drainage route, the cistern.
4. "Is your site labour declared?" It should be, and you should ask. Undeclared labour is cheaper for a reason and the risk transfers to you as the property owner.
5. "Can I see your insurance certificates?" Public liability, contract works. A real contractor produces them the same day.
6. "Who is my point of contact, and will they still be here at handover?" A salesperson who hands over to a project manager you have not met is a different proposition from one person throughout.
7. "How will you report progress, and can I see a sample report from a real project?" This tells you more about how they will behave than any reference will.
8. "How do you handle variations?" The answer should be: priced and agreed in writing before the work happens, with the programme impact stated at the same time.
9. "What float have you carried for ferry and weather, and where is it in the programme?" If there is none, the programme is fiction. If it is hidden inside each trade's duration, it will not be there when it is needed.
10. "What do you not do?" Everyone has limits. A contractor who claims every specialism in-house on an island this size is not describing reality.
11. "What would you advise against in what I have asked for?" The most revealing question of the eleven. Someone who agrees with everything is selling, not advising.

Warning signs

• A fixed price for a building nobody has opened up. Either padded heavily or planning to recover it through variations.
• Reluctance about a retention clause. Retention exists so finishing the last five per cent is in the contractor's interest. Resistance to it is informative.
• No written variation procedure. Verbal variations agreed on site become disputes at the final account, every time.
• A quotation that is a single number. You want quantities and rates, with exclusions and provisional sums labelled.
• Vagueness about who is doing the work. "We have a team" is not an answer about whether the trades are held or brokered.
• Pressure to start before the permit. Anyone offering this is offering to create an αυθαίρετο on your title. See legalisation.
• A price substantially below the others. On an island with transparent freight costs and a known labour market, a big outlier usually means something has been excluded. Find out what.
• No interest in your architect or engineer. A contractor uninterested in the design team is a contractor who intends to work around them.

Comparing quotations properly

Two quotations for the same job are almost never comparing the same thing, and the difference is usually in the exclusions rather than the rates.

What to check before signing

• Company registration and VAT number, verified rather than accepted.
• Insurance certificates with sums insured and expiry dates.
• That site labour is declared.
• A written contract with scope, programme, payment stages tied to completed work, retention, variation procedure and warranty terms. See what a contract should include.
• Who your named contact is, and that they are the person you have been dealing with.
• What happens if the programme slips and who carries what.

Applying this to us

This guide is only useful if it applies to the company publishing it, so it does.

Ask us the eleven questions. Ask to see a weekly report. Ask what we would refuse to quote without opening up, and what we would advise against in what you have asked for. Ask for the insurance certificates and the registration details — some of which are listed in required inputs as we complete them, and we would rather tell you that plainly than imply we have supplied documents we have not.

And ask us what we do not do. There is a list of it on our about page, including the work we turn down and why.

What good looks like once work has started

Choosing well is half of it. The other half is knowing what normal looks like, so you can tell when it is not.

• A written report weekly, whether or not there is news, with dated photographs from consistent positions.
• Variations arrive before the work, not after — priced, with the programme impact stated at the same time.
• Problems reported when they occur. A contractor who tells you about a problem the week it happens is behaving well, even when the news is bad.
• The programme reissued when it changes, with the reason. Not quietly re-baselined so it always shows on time.
• Inspections at the moments that matter — reinforcement before pours, falls before screeds, waterproofing before tiling — and you are told they happened.
• Payment requests matching completed and inspected work, not the calendar.
• A tidy site with waste going somewhere documented.

If most of those are absent, the relationship is already going wrong regardless of how the work looks. The first missed weekly report is worth raising immediately — it is the cheapest moment to correct the pattern.

If it is already going wrong

Occasionally people come to us mid-project. The sequence that protects you is the same regardless of who you continue with.

1. Get an independent survey of what has actually been built against what was drawn and paid for, in writing. This document is the basis of every option you have.
2. Stop paying ahead of completed work immediately. Payment ahead of progress is what removes your remaining leverage.
3. Put everything in writing from that point, including confirming verbal conversations by email the same day.
4. Get a structural opinion if any of the concern is structural. That is an engineer's call, not a second builder's.
5. Take legal advice before terminating anything. A badly handled termination can cost more than the original problem.