FAQs for Before the Build for Self Builders

Question 1

How much contingency should a self build budget carry?

Accepted Answer

Enough to match your build's real unknowns - the ground, the design's maturity, the market - rather than a token percentage picked to make the total look affordable. There is no single right number, and be wary of anyone who offers one without asking questions first. A contingency - the budget's stated allowance for what nobody can see yet - should be sized to where your build's genuine unknowns live: ground conditions before anything is dug, a design still moving, prices quoted months before they are paid, a specification with decisions still open. A build on a surveyed plot with a frozen design and a full specification can honestly carry less; a sloping site with half the decisions pending needs more, and pretending otherwise just moves the surprise into borrowed money. What makes a contingency work is less its size than its discipline: stated as its own line, sized for reasons you can say out loud, and never quietly spent on upgrades.

Question 2

Should I sign the contract my builder has put in front of me?

Accepted Answer

Not before it has been read against your interests. A contract chosen and completed by one side tends to suit that side, however decent the builder. Perhaps - but read first, and read it as the person it binds. Most builders are not trying to trap you; they simply use the paperwork they know, filled in the way that suits how they like to run jobs. The questions that decide whether it suits you too: how payment works, and whether money would leave ahead of the work; what happens when something changes, and who prices it; whether retention - the slice of each payment held back until faults are put right - exists at all; what the completion date means, and what actually happens if it is missed; and what stands behind the builder if things go wrong. Recognised standard forms of building contract exist precisely for projects like yours, and asking to use one is not an insult - it is normal. Where the wording itself needs legal force, that is a solicitor's ground, and I say so plainly.

Question 3

Why are my builders' quotes so different from each other?

Accepted Answer

Because they are not pricing the same job: each quote includes, excludes and guesses different things, so the bottom lines are not comparable as they stand. Hand the same drawings to three builders and you will get three different documents, because a quote is a set of decisions: what to include, what to exclude, what to cover with a provisional sum - an allowance for work not yet properly priced, which is a guess wearing the costume of a number - and how much risk to price in. One builder includes the groundworks complete; another excludes rock, assumes good ground, and wins the comparison right up until the digger finds otherwise. The spread between your quotes is not noise - it is information about what each builder saw, feared or left out. The way through is to rebuild all of them onto one basis before comparing any totals, turn every exclusion and provisional sum into a written question, and treat the answers as part of the price. The lowest number is rarely the cheapest build.

Question 4

What is a provisional sum in a builder's quote?

Accepted Answer

An allowance for work that cannot be properly priced yet - a placeholder, not a promise, and the place where quote totals most often grow later. When part of the work cannot be priced at quote stage - the kitchen not yet chosen, the ground not yet opened, the drainage run not yet designed - the builder puts in a provisional sum: a stated allowance that stands in the total until the real cost is known. It is honest practice in itself; the trouble is what it does to comparisons and expectations. A quote's bottom line is only as firm as its softest lines, and a total leaning on generous provisional sums is really a smaller firm price plus a set of guesses - each one adjusted later, usually upwards, without competition. Before signing: know exactly which lines are provisional, ask what each allowance would actually buy at today's prices, and have the adjustment mechanism - how the real cost replaces the allowance - written into the contract. Then watch each one as it lands during the build.

FAQs for Before the Build, Self Builders

Frequently asked questions

Before you sign

How much contingency should a self build budget carry?

Should I sign the contract my builder has put in front of me?

Why are my builders' quotes so different from each other?

What is a provisional sum in a builder's quote?