Design and Construction

New Build

No doubt we have all seen ‘Grand Designs’ on television and at times been shocked by the apparently unrealistic budgeting, lack of building contracts, ineffective control of costs and the horrendous time overruns.

Croft Surveyors can bring a wealth of experience and certain design flair to the design and construction of your new building; be it a stylish bespoke home carefully tailored to your needs, or commercial development aimed squarely at maximising your investment return. We will always however keep your budgetary requirements in mind and as far as is possible limit your exposure to the risk of cost and time overruns, and failure of the contractor to perform to your satisfaction.

Extensions and Alterations

As your family or your business grows, eventually you are likely to feel the need for more space to grow into. Rather than facing the disruption of moving to a larger house or premises, it may well be possible to alter or extend your existing property to meet your new needs. Whether this is a simple but elegant timber sun-room, a loft conversion or even a twenty-bedroom hotel extension; we would be happy to advise on, design and procure your new project to bring together your spatial needs with the price you can afford.

Refurbishment

It may be that your building meets all your needs in terms of location and size but simply doesn’t have the ‘wow factor’ you want to make it the perfect home or attract more business. You might consider asking us for a professionally designed refurbishment to bring the property up to a modern standard with all the style, comfort levels and quality of services you would expect from a modern building.

Drawings and Specification

As part of the overall design package we can offer you; we use our in-house Computer Aided Design (CAD) skills to create high quality CAD drawings to help you fully understand our proposals right from the ‘outline’ sketch levels through to the highly detailed drawings required for planning and tender. On occasion we may also produce 3D computer graphic models of schemes to allow you an even clearer visualisation of your design options.

If you wish we can then develop our final design to provide you with a full, detailed specification in order to allow the preparation of a tender package or a Bill of Quantities.

Planning Advice

The planning system can seem daunting if not downright confusing to the casual observer interested only in obtaining consent for their own generally quite reasonable plans. You might approach your Local Authority for guidance on the basic acceptability of a simple scheme only to be told that they will charge you a fee possibly in excess of £1000.00 for even basic pre-application consultation!

With extensive experience of negotiating our way through the myriad local and national planning rules and regulations, we are able to offer solid, reasoned advice on all planning matters including the likelihood of success of obtaining consent for your particular project, and where amendments might increase the chances of gaining approval at the first attempt. We can then if asked to develop your ideas and our advice into a full application complete with all the necessary supporting documentation and reports required.

Listed Buildings

If you own or manage a Listed Building you will probably be acutely aware of the requirement to obtain consent for almost all alterations and a great many repairs to your building. Because your building is listed does not necessarily mean that you cannot make such changes; it does however require considerable sensitivity to the historic character of the building and thoroughness in researching, designing and preparing the application. You may however be unaware that to undertake these works without Listed Building Consent is a criminal offence for which you can be prosecuted.

At Croft Surveyors we have significant skills and experience in surveying and specifying repairs to Listed Buildings, which we would be happy to bring to your project. We have also designed and obtained consent for alterations and extensions to many Listed Buildings in the region.

Building Regulations

Receiving Planning Consent for your scheme is only the start of clearing the regulatory hurdles to getting your project built. In all but the smallest of schemes you will also need to demonstrate compliance with the ever more complex and changing requirements of the Building Regulations.

Nowadays it is rarely possible to take a completed design and ‘paste’ details onto it to gain Building Regulations approval. As part of our full design package we take a ‘holistic’ approach to the design to ensure that the scheme that you have gained Planning Consent for is also compliant with the Building Regulations without major modification.

Contract Administration

When you have gained all the approvals necessary for your scheme to proceed you still have the task of finding a competent and trustworthy builder to build it for you, at a price you are comfortable with paying.

One solution would be to take advantage of our full Contract Administration services whereby we put a scheme out to tender with your choice of Contractors. We would of course be happy assist you in drawing up a tender list with our experience and history of working with many local and regional firms. We will then place the contract on your behalf and administer it through to completion.

Building Cost Advice

With any building project the fear of uncontrolled cost overruns can be palpable. We would as a matter of course give guidance on budget costing for projects we design for you, from the earliest outline feasibility stage continuing through to the end of our involvement in the scheme.

Construction Design and Management Regulations (CDM)

In all but the smallest commercial building and maintenance projects you will be required by the Construction Design and Management Regulations (2007) to appoint a qualified CDM Coordinator right from the beginning of the design stage to manage Health and Safety aspects of the design, construction and use of the building. There are many advantages in appointing one from the same firm that undertakes the architectural design; in order to streamline communication and ensure full design compliance from the outset.

We would be happy to quote for providing this service either alongside providing our design services or for another project designed elsewhere.