Making Paint

Commercial operations rarely employ one company to undertake the entirety of the project, recognising a multitude of skills and approaches are necessary. Larger commercial operations will rarely employ any companies with permanent staff, they will simply sub-contract out the work to trained locals (or less local groups temporarily staying in the area for work).

The opposite is true in the domestic world. The most common method for the domestic client is to contract a general builder, who will either have a large enough team to carry out the work themselves in house, or will contract people in as discussed above. Having existed in that world for many years I have been contracted in on a temporary basis and given a company t-shirt on the first morning working for them, told to pretend to be in-house and left to get on with it, many times (so I’m always dubious as to the degree of the inhouse-ness).

The building trade is an ancient, and largely un-updated, market that is trying to operate in the modern world. As such it provides its own confusions and oddities.

In short there are broadly three main types of builders operating in the country.

• The general builder, this is an individual who oversees an entire project- often doing the work largley alone. A good general builder will require a general mastery of most trades (plastering, bricklaying, carpentry) alongside a competency for business and accounts management.

• The skilled tradesman. A small operation, usually of one or two individuals though these do grow into larger conglomerates (that are often relatively short lived). This will be your plumber, electrician or bricklayer. Someone who is a master (hopefully) of their individual craft; but won’t touch other aspects of the build. They will provide a much higher quality finish than the general builder (most of the time), but will require a high degree of management as part of the larger project.

• The commercial builder. These are the individuals one sees in hi-vis vests getting lunch and coffee around the center of cities. They are much maligned, but in fact are the only people in this list who are required to be qualified in order to get a job. They will be working on a day rate basis (£2-300 a day) as part of a team delivering a complex commercial project. They will be overseen by an unrelated foreman, who in turn will be overseen by about three thousand office managers.

I have worked as all of the above in my time, snippets from those times below.

There is no industry standard for pricing, regardless of what SPONS claims.

Work is often not comparable, an artisan venetian plasterer isn’t comparable to Gaz from site (sorry Gaz), however price isn’t always an indication of quality.

If something is going to be high-quality than in my opinion it is worth paying a premium for- often significantly above “market rate” as “market rate” is based on the large house builders wanting to kick out a gigantic quanity whilst maintaining their profit margins.

SO what happens is general builders, or primary contractors, will take an educated guess as to what things will cost them to get done. We will add a contingency and then add a profit margin to the above estimate, which will then be presented to the client. The builders job is then to get things done for less than expected.

However as materials prices and labour rates consistently increase month on month and the job inevitably takes longer than anticipted (a law of life, as certain as gravity). This always leads to rushed work and expanding bills. (In my opinion the expanding bills is a much lesser problem than the rushed work, within a degree of reason).

A merging of the domestic and commercial approaches (having experience in both).

I tender myself as a manager or agent working on behalf of the client. This is for a set fee which isn’t subjected to the pressures a normal builders price is.

This means I don’t have to worry about the things a normal builder does, leaving me much more free to pursue excellence in the build. I also find that this creates a much more trusting relationship between the client and myself.

There are many ways this can work, but one is that once we’ve negotiated a fee we’re all happy with I will get on with the job of getting two things underway:

• Firstly immediately instructing commercial site operatives from the locality to begin the more basic run of the mill works (strip out, structural works, ground works etc etc). As there tends to be a pool of these individuals floating between commercial jobs we tend to be able to get fully qualified operatives in a very short period of time.

• Secondly, arranging the more skilled small craftsmen to come and do the things their required for at a date based on our readiness. This enables us to have the run of the country (and the world if wanted) in getting the exacty craftsment we want for the job.

By being paid a fixed fee, in lieu of a profit margin, I no longer have to be concerned about anything but completing the project in a timely and high quality fashion; within the budget we’ve arranged.

It means the client does not have to pay for my profit, a mark up on materials, a mark up on other labour.

There are many ways of logistically carrying this out, one of them is the client sets up a dedicated limited company specifically for the duration of the build (Special Purpose Vehicle/or SPV). Some clients find this to be… advantageous.

I could make more money by operating in a traditional manner, extracting profits from the job.

I simply don’t want to.

I always find a fee to be more than generous and I want my relationship to be with the client, the building and quality, rather than with profit margins.

In the initial phases, which make up the bulk of the build, the first fix carpentry, structural alterations, dry lining, bricklaying and all the rest the advantage of the hybrid method above is predominantly efficiency (not necessarily speed) and control.

I source labour from a combination of places for this phase-

• Advertisments, this is how recruitment agencies and larger sites get their workers

• Sub-Contracting conglomerates- these are similar to a recruitment agency but with a much higher degree of quality. They will sub-contract work to a consistent pool of workers and be very capable of adaptaton.

• Recruitment Agencies, these are the fastest most dynamic way to get labour; but they will add 10-20% onto the labour bill making them expensive to use longterm. However, invaluable for plugging gaps.

• Small local firms that can undertake clearly defined tasks- install steels, install electrics, install windows, etc etc.

One tends to find the above works out cheaper, even when taking into account the agency fees.

However, this isn’t always the case. Using a recruitment agency for a large part of the job does add up. My preference is direct labour or small dedicated sub-contracting firms such as Jack Rafter for carpentry or EP for brickwork.

I find the costs to be much less speculative, what I do is work out the “ideal rate” using SPONS Architectural and Builders Price Book and then either double or triple it.

This is because the SPONS book is based on an ideal and often insane notion of what a man can get done in a day. One mistake office based managers make is taking SPONS word as gospel, and not understanding one is employing humans and not machines.

The duplication of the above gives a working budget, which I then try to arrange things to be done much closer to the SPONS prediction than the duplication.

The advantages of the above is broadly efficiency, scope of work and an ability to access individuals skilled in their fields. The downsides are using disparate workers means one has to quickly develop them into a functioning team and manage them closely. I am good at this.

It also means we have the ability to use any artisan for the parts we want them for, rather than being limited to the specific builders skillset. There is a reason larger contractors can do so many disparate tasks- they employ disparate people.

The above means we can achieve any aesthetic and any finish with any material, even if it’s completely novel to me.

It also means I can function in a streamlined fashion anywhere in the country, or the world.

The above is designed to create a very different relationship between builder and client.

It is designed so I act as an agent on the clients behalf, given a fee so as to see a project completed whilst causing the least stress to the client.

I am therefore open and honest about everything, all budgetary calculations are shared, all materials calculations are shared, predictions, victories and set backs are shared. This can either be regularly, at specific progress meetings or never, at the clients leisure.

Clients may wish to consider creating a Special Purpose Vehicle, a LTD company created specifically for the purposes of the build. This has tax and inheritence implications to be discussed with their accountant.

On a similar note, and related to the above, I have developed close relationships with several contractors and suppliers. From carpenters to plumbers, and from lime kilns to Honka log cabins (some photos of these below).