Building regulations
These cover a wide variety of aspects from safety and environmental efficiency to access and structural requirements. They’re there for your protection – ensuring that your builder does your work to satisfactory standards. We look after this process for you – making the applications, managing the inspections, and ensuring your project complies. We normally produce the drawings and submit them two weeks before we start on site
Link to LABC
Planning permission
This is needed if you change the visual appearance or increase the size of your building. In principle it applies to anything you can see from the outside. We can look after this process for you – giving you advice, producing drawings, and helping you apply. It generally takes eight weeks after submission to get approval.
Health and safety
The Construction (Design and Management) regulations 2007 place responsibilities on clients, designers and contractors. We work to these regulations in order to improve health and safety, plan effectively and manage risk. Once you’ve appointed us as your “competent contractor” we take care of the whole process. If you have a company safety plan, we will ensure our safe system of work is incorporated into yours.
Disability discrimination Act (DDA)
We’re fully conversant with the guidelines in this area, especially in view of the work we regularly undertake for schools and colleges. We ensure that DDA requirements are met in all our designs for commercial and public buildings.
Link to DDA website
Typical project timescales
Normally your first step will be to establish what you need including budget, occupancy levels and lifespan. Next, call us in for a discussion and to take your brief. On a typical £250-£500K project, you should allow two weeks for the design, and two for producing costings and your quotation. After your acceptance and approval, there’s normally a four week procurement period. After that, it will take around twelve weeks for your work to be carried out and your project completed.