Money
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2 min read
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What a fixed price includes, line by line
A fixed price is only as good as its schedule. Here is how we write ours, and what to ask any builder before you sign.
Most building disputes start with a price that was never really fixed. A single figure on a letterhead tells you very little. What protects you is the schedule behind it: every item with a quantity and a cost, a short list of provisional sums, and a clear list of what is not included.
Our fixed price arrives about three weeks after the site visit. It is built from the drawings, a measured survey and the engineer’s calculations, and it is split into the same stages you will see on site and in every Friday report.
The schedule, section by section
This is how the fixed price for a rear extension like Clarence Road is laid out. The figures are rounded examples from that job.
Section | What it covers | Example |
|---|---|---|
Preliminaries | Scaffold, skips, welfare, site protection, insurance, project management | £9,400 |
Structure | Foundations, drainage, steels, walls and roof, each with quantities | £38,600 |
Openings and glazing | Bifold doors, roof windows, lintels and making good | £14,200 |
Services | Electrics, plumbing and heating, priced room by room | £8,900 |
Finishes | Plaster, flooring, joinery and decoration | £11,650 |
Fees we pay for you | Building control and the party wall surveyor | £2,300 |
Provisional sums | Items we cannot price until the ground is open | £2,200 |
Fixed price |
| £87,250 |
Provisional sums, and why they stay small
A provisional sum is an honest placeholder for work nobody can see yet, usually drainage or old foundations. We keep them few and small, we say how each one was estimated, and when the work is done we replace the placeholder with the real cost in the next report. If a builder’s quote is mostly provisional sums, it is not a fixed price.
What we list as excluded
Appliances, sanitaryware or lighting you are buying yourself
Furniture moves and storage
Garden landscaping beyond the area we disturb
Anything the drawings do not show
“If it is not on the schedule, it is not in the price. We would rather tell you that before you sign.”
How changes are handled
When you change your mind, or the ground surprises us, you get a change note with the cost and the effect on the programme. Nothing is built until you sign it, and every signed change appears in the next Friday report against the agreed figure. On Clarence Road there was one: a second roof window, £1,200, signed in week 6.
Questions to ask any builder
Ask to see the schedule behind the figure. Ask which items are provisional and how they were estimated. Ask how you will see the money as the job goes on. A builder who reports spend every week has nothing to hide at the end, and if two quotes are far apart, lay the schedules side by side: the gap is usually in the preliminaries, the drainage or the finishes.
The point of all this paper is simple. When the schedule, the provisional sums and the exclusions are agreed before we start, the only way the price moves is a change note you have signed, and every one of those shows up in the next Friday report.
General guidance from a fictional demo firm, not professional advice. Rules change; check the current position for your own house.
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