Stage 3: Getting prices you can actually compare

Three builders given a set of drawings and asked for a price will return three documents that cannot be compared. Not because anyone is being dishonest, but because each has guessed differently at what you want, and each has left different things out.

This stage is about removing the guessing.

3.1 How you are running your build

Before you ask anyone for a price, be clear which of these you are doing, because it changes who you are asking and what you are asking for.

One builder. You engage a single builder for the whole job. One contract, one point of responsibility, and the gaps between trades are theirs to worry about. The most common route and the simplest to run.

One builder with somebody administering. The same, except an architect, project manager or employer’s agent runs the contract for you: they certify what is due, deal with variations and hold the ring. More cost, less work, and considerably less risk of the paperwork going wrong.

Trades direct. You act as your own main contractor and engage each trade yourself. Cheaper on paper because you are not paying a builder’s overhead and profit, and materially harder, because everything the builder would have done, the sequencing, the coordination, the gaps between packages, is now yours. It is also where the commercial discipline in this guide matters most, because there are ten contracts rather than one.

A kit or package supplier. A timber frame, SIPs or turnkey company supplies and often erects a defined part of the building. Their scope boundary is the thing to nail down, because two kit companies will define “weathertight shell” differently and the gap is yours.

Shell then self finish. A contractor takes it to weathertight, you finish it with direct trades and your own labour. The second half is effectively a trades-direct build.

Whichever you are on, the phrase “your builder” in this guide means whoever you are paying. On trades direct, read it as “each trade”, and expect to do everything below once per package.

3.2 Asking three builders the same question

The reason quotes come back incomparable is that the question was vague. A set of drawings is not a question. It shows what the house looks like; it says nothing about who provides the scaffolding, whether the drive is included, what happens about the kitchen, or what allowance to carry for a drainage connection nobody has quoted yet.

So each builder fills those gaps with their own assumption, and none of them tell you which assumption they made.

An enquiry pack removes the gaps. It has four parts.

A scope description. In plain words: what is being built, what is in the builder’s price, what you are arranging yourself, what has already been ordered, and the practical facts about the site, access, parking, working hours, who provides power and water.

A pricing schedule. One line per package, the same lines for every builder, with a column for their price and a column for exclusions. This is the important part. When every builder prices the same schedule, comparison becomes arithmetic rather than interpretation.

A drawing list. Every drawing, with its number and revision, so that everyone has priced the same design. Drawings change during tendering more often than people expect.

A question set. The things you need to know that a price does not tell you.

Twelve questions cover it:

1. What is your price, on the attached schedule, with every line filled in?
2. What have you excluded, and why?
3. How long will it take, and when could you start?
4. How many of your own people will be on site, and what will you subcontract?
5. Which contract are you willing to sign?
6. What payments do you want, and when?
7. Do you want any money before you start, and what for?
8. What is your company’s registered name and number?
9. What insurance do you carry, and to what limit?
10. Can we see two houses like this that you have finished, and speak to those owners?
11. Who will be our point of contact, and who runs the site day to day?
12. How do you price changes once work has started?

Send it to everyone on the same day with the same deadline. And note the answer to question 1 carefully: a builder who will not price on your schedule is telling you something useful about how the rest of the job would go.

On question 8, do the check. Look the company up. Companies House is free. Look at when it was incorporated, whether the accounts are filed on time, what the net assets are, and whether the trading name on the quote matches the legal entity. You are about to hand this company several hundred thousand pounds. Fifteen minutes is not excessive.

The tool: the Builder Enquiry Pack. The scope and question sheets are yours to fill in; the pricing schedule sheet is what you send each builder to complete and return.

3.3 The cheapest quote is not the cheapest build

When the quotes come back, do not compare the totals on the covering letters. That comparison is meaningless, and it is the one almost everybody makes.

Instead, level them. Levelling means adding to each quote whatever it left out, so that every price covers the same work.

The method.

1. Put each builder’s price against each package, from their schedules.
2. Work through the exclusions on each quote. For every exclusion, decide what that item would actually cost and add it to the quotes that excluded it.
3. Look at the provisional sums. A provisional sum is a placeholder for work nobody has priced yet, and a builder can make their total look attractive by carrying an unrealistically small one. Replace each with a realistic figure, using a real quotation where you can get one.
4. Look for things priced twice, which happens more often than you would think, usually with scaffolding or with plant that appears in preliminaries and again in a package.
5. Mark every figure you add as your own allowance on your own stated basis. It is not a price from anybody, and you should be able to say where each one came from.

Then compare the levelled totals.

A quote that moves a long way when levelled is not a bad quote. It is an incomplete one, and the gap would have arrived later as extras. What levelling buys you is finding out now, while you still have three builders interested and therefore still have a bargaining position.

The tool: the Quote Comparison and Levelling Sheet.

What Stage 3 leaves you with

A price you understand, from a builder you have checked, on a basis you can point at. And, just as importantly, a written record of what each builder said they were including, which becomes the reference point for every argument about scope for the next year.