Building your own house? This holds the whole thing with you.
Your solicitor reads your contracts. Your engineer reads your ground. Your builder reads the drawings. Nobody holds the whole thing except you, and you are doing it for the first time.
The documents it writes for you
These are not lists on a screen. They are documents you send to real people, and they come back and land in your record.
A budget
Every cost on the build in one place, grouped the way the work is actually bought.
You find out what a decision costs while you can still change it, not at the end.
See how it works
A programme
The order the work has to happen in, with dates against it.
When the roof slips two weeks, it shows you what else moves and who needs telling.
See how it works
Enquiries and orders
One document per trade asking every builder the same questions, and the record of what you then agreed with each of them.
Prices you can actually compare, and no argument later about what was agreed or what is still owed.
See how it works
Quotes side by side
Every quote for a trade in one sheet, with what each one left out.
The cheapest price is usually the one missing something. This is where you see what.
See how it works
Safety paperwork
Method statements and risk assessments for the work that falls between the trades.
Nobody else writes these for you, and you are the one responsible for them.
See how it works
A site diary
What happened each day, who was on site, and photographs of what is about to be covered up.
Fifteen years on, somebody opening that wall can see what is behind it and where.
See how it works
The completion pack
One PDF holding the certificates, warranties, drawings and photographs from the whole build.
Two years later, when somebody asks for the file, there is a file.
See how it works
What it covers
It starts before you own anything and finishes after the house does. Every part of it writes into the same record, so what you found in month two is still there in month twenty.
Before you look
What you can actually afford once the ground, the fees and the connections are in the number.
The plots you are looking at
What you found on each one, what to ask about it, and what did not add up.
Buying it, and getting permission
What you promised in order to get consent, and who you appointed to do what.
Pricing the work
What you are asking builders to price, sent out the same way to each of them, and their prices compared line by line.
Building it
What happened on site and when, who was there, what was delivered, and the safety paperwork that goes with it.
Finishing
The snags, the connections, and every certificate handed to you on the way out.
The completion pack
One file with the whole build in it, which is the thing a lender, a solicitor or a buyer asks for.
More on what the project record holds, and what you leave with.
How to try it
Start with the plot check below: free, no account, and it stays that way. Beyond that: have a look round a finished build without signing up for anything, or take seven days with the whole thing and your own project in it.
Start with a plot you are looking at
Put in a postcode and we will show you the same ground on the old Ordnance Survey sheet: what used to be there, before anyone levelled it. Free, no account, about two minutes.
After that it is £40 a month, one build at a time, and it includes the book kept up to date as it changes. What that includes.
Start seven daysLook round a real build
The book on its own
The whole method is a book, and you can buy it and never come back. Paperback £29.99, ebook £9.99, or a PDF straight from us at £9.99.
The copy you buy is the copy you keep. The subscription carries the same chapters kept current as rules, prices and products change. The two are the same words in different states, not the same thing sold twice.