How to Choose a Building Company, From One

Every horror story you have heard about building work began with the same decision, made badly. Choosing the company is the project: the design, the price, the programme and your sanity all flow from it. It may seem strange for a building company to publish a guide to vetting building companies, but we would rather meet informed clients, because the checks that expose a weak builder cost a good one nothing.

Start with the boring checks, because they filter fastest. Look the company up on Companies House: how long it has traded, who the directors are, whether accounts are filed on time. Ask for the certificate of public liability insurance and check the cover level; serious firms carry serious cover and produce the certificate without friction. Ask where the office is. None of this proves a builder is good, but a firm that stumbles on any of it has told you everything. For the record: MVV Construction Ltd is company 16276967, our office is on Turnham Green Terrace in Chiswick, and we carry ten million pounds of public and employers liability cover.

Ask to see finished projects, and ask specifically for one similar to yours in scale and standard. Better still, ask to speak to the client. What you want from that conversation is not whether the project was perfect, because no building project is; it is how the company behaved when something went wrong. Ask the reference two questions: what surprised you, and would you use them again? The pause before the second answer tells you the truth.

The cheapest quote is usually the least complete one. A proper quotation itemises what is included and, more importantly, what is not: provisional sums, client supplies, VAT, professional fees. When one number is far below the others, the difference is almost always scope, and you will pay it later with interest through variations. Insist on a written scope you can compare line by line, a payment schedule tied to completed stages rather than dates, and a real contract. If a builder resists a contract, believe them the first time.

With separate designer and contractor you get independence, and you also get a gap in the middle where responsibility can fall when drawings and buildability disagree. With design and build, one firm owns the design, the price and the delivery, so the person pricing the work is accountable to the person who drew it. We are a design and build company, so we are not neutral here, but the honest version of the argument is this: the fewer handovers a project has, the fewer places blame can hide. Choose the model, then hold whoever you choose to single-point accountability.

Take this list to every meeting. Who exactly will run my site day to day, and can I meet them? What does your payment schedule look like, and what triggers each payment? What happens when we change our minds mid-build? Which parts of this quote are provisional? Can I speak to the client from a project like mine? A good company answers all five comfortably, because it answers them every week. If you are pricing a project now, The Estimator on this site will give you a realistic range for your postcode before a single builder crosses your doorstep, which is the strongest negotiating position a client can start from.