Same six stages.
Built around your numbers.

Before a single line gets drawn, we need accurate scaled CAD drawings of your property — every building on site, ideally with enough of the neighbouring context to design against. We survey it ourselves, or arrange it. Nothing after this stage is more important than getting this right; it's the foundation the whole design sits on.

We start by understanding what you actually want from the project — not a template, your project — factoring in site constraints, planning realities, and budget from day one. Several honest routes get sketched, not just one, so you can see what's actually possible before committing to a direction.

Once we're refining, outline costs come from industry-standard square-metre rates, so you're making decisions with real numbers, not guesses. We keep refining — how each unit sits, how the space flows, where the glazing goes — until it's genuinely settled, not just signed off. CGI visuals are available at this stage if it helps you see the scheme clearly before it's built.

Depending on the scheme, we may recommend a pre-application meeting with the planning department first — worth doing if your design pushes past the ordinary, since it can save far more time than it costs. Once submitted, validated applications typically take 8 weeks, and we handle every supporting document that goes with it: planning, heritage, design and access statements, whatever the scheme needs to demonstrate compliance.

If a scheme genuinely has no chance of approval, we'll tell you — but planning policy has real subjective range, and it's often worth testing that range properly. Either way, we're the ones in the room with the planning officer, not you.

A structural engineer comes on to handle foundations, beams, columns — the calculations and drawings that make the design actually stand up — and we coordinate their work against ours so nothing conflicts. Party wall surveyors, energy assessors, and (where you're building near or over a public sewer) a build-over agreement with the water authority get brought in here too, if the project needs them.

Detailed design and tender action — diving deeper into the technical design and nuts and bolts of the building, collating a package of drawings and specifications sent out for pricing, so you end up with a contractor booked in.

We draw up the building contract itself (usually JCT), covering cost, time on site, penalties, and retentions — and act as contract administrator if the project needs one. We'll always tell you to keep a contingency; unexpected costs have a way of surfacing once the walls are actually open.

Regular site meetings keep every party aligned on cost, programme, and design as the build progresses. And we don't consider a design finished until furniture — loose and fitted — has been designed into the room. Joinery and interior design services are part of adding value, not an afterthought.