How To Choose A Builder To Work With

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How To Choose A Builder To Work With:

I'm going to share with you some advice for selecting which builder you want to work with on your project. By this point you will have prepared your specification, given it to a number of builders, shown them around the property, and hopefully got some prices back.

So the question now is, which builder are you going to work with?

The first thing I would say is that, although you need to look carefully at each of their prices, price alone is NOT the only criteria to select a builder on.

There are more important elements to look out for. For example, when you walked the builders around, if you didn't feel that you could work with one of them, or perhaps you couldn't understand them or they couldn't understand you, then I'd suggest that's a good reason not to be employing them... That might immediately eliminate one of the contractors for you before price even comes into the mix.

You might find that some contractors aren't able to start when you need them to, which could be another reason to eliminate a contractor from the list.

With the ones that you have left who made it through the first phase, your next decision is going to be based more around price. You need to make sure that you're comparing like for like - the contractors need to price your specification to do the work that YOU want them to do, not what THEY think should be done.

Hopefully they've given you a breakdown of their prices which is compatible with your specification. Check that every item or section has been priced and if there are any gaps then follow up to find out why.

Make sure that their figures add up - you'd be surprised how many times I've found an error in there. You need to sort that out before you can accurately compare their price to the other contractors.

If you're lucky enough to have prices from 3 contractors, all broken down in similar ways, start to look at how they compare on an item by item basis. If 2 of the contractors have priced one element at £2,500 and the other has priced at £1,000 then you have reason to go back to the cheaper contractor and get them to double check that they've understood what you want... Yes, it feels good that they've priced it so much cheaper, but ultimately if they've made a mistake then it will only backfire on you as you'll need to pay more when it comes to light further down the line.

Also look out for figures that look unusually high - go back to that contractor, especially if that's the one you want to work with, and ask them to double check what has been priced to make it so much higher than the other contractors. You might find that they've also included something else that needs taking into account, or even added something up wrong.

You've got the opportunity to get the price down by spot checking a few prices and you can do this to get lower prices without needing to ask for a saving - builders hate it when you ask for a percentage saving to be taken off the bottom line. If they give you their best price in the first instance and then you ask for more to be taken off, the next time round they'll just add that on beforehand - and possibly a bit more!