Tips on building an extension: Builders Quote
With planning permission and building control in the bag, the next stage for us was
to get builders quotes. The standard advice is to get three quotes. Companies of builders come in a range of sizes from a guy and his son who can do all trades, up to large companies who employ a full range of specialist tradesmen. They will all do everything including electrics, heating, plumbing etc., but some will do it all themselves while others will sub-contract. The disadvantage of sub-contracting is that if the work schedule falls behind the contractor may not be ready at the right time. Also, if something is done badly, your construction company may blame the contractor who then does not agree. However, in my experience the large companies who do it all quote much more. An advantage of sub-contractors is that the builder will be able to slelect from the best specialists who he has had previous experience of. I told you that some independent small builders had given me estimates of £30,000 earlier on. Now that I had more specfic construction details the cost had risen. Quotes varied from £70,000 to £147,000. One of them quoted £14,000 just for the electrical work! Top Tip: Only aks for definite quotes when you have all the construction details written down.
Top Tip: Tell the builder to state whether or not VAT is included in his written quote. Top Tip: Check builder references well. I requested references from the builder who gave the quote of £70,000. He duly sent a list of customers from recent work and I talked to them by phone. They all gave good recommendations. A good ploy is to ask each customer referenced what dates the builder worked from and to. If there are recent date ranges left for which no customer reference is provided, ask the builder what happened. He may have had a bad job that he does not want to tell you about, so does his story sound plausible? Having selected the builder I needed a contract. No use relying on the builder to set that up. They are happy to just work from an informal agreement. It is standard to use the Joint Contracts Tribunal at http://www.jctltd.co.uk/ who have a comprehensive list of the fixed building contracts to choose from. I found that the perfect contract for my project was HO/B ("Building contract for a home owner/occupier who has not appointed a consultant to oversee the work") It cost about £12 to pruchase. If a builder tries to discourage you from using a JCT contract then that builder is one to avoid. The list of works and material that the builder had quoted on was attached to the contract. I made him initial each page just to make sure.
| |||||||||||