Most disputes between builders and clients come down to one sentence: “I thought that was included.” A fixed price only protects you if the list behind it is complete, so here is ours.
The headings on every Massif quote
Preliminaries come first: the site manager, welfare cabins, scaffolding, skips, insurance and temporary power. They often add twelve per cent to a job and are the line most often missing from a cheap quote.
Then the work itself, trade by trade, each with quantities you can check against the drawings. Then provisional sums for anything that cannot be measured until we open up.
The three lines people leave out
Building control fees, connection charges from the utility companies, and making good to neighbours’ property. None is large on its own. Together they are usually four or five per cent.
What can change the price
Only two things: you change the brief, or the ground or the existing building turns out to be different from the survey. In both cases we price the change in writing before any work continues.
