Collaboration with Expert Professionals

A renovation of any size is a team effort played by people who have never met. Architect, structural engineer, building control, party wall surveyor, main contractor, specialist trades, kitchen and joinery suppliers, lighting and audiovisual designers, landscape architect: each is competent within their own domain, and none of them is responsible for the gaps between domains. The gaps are where projects go wrong.

Our role is to assemble the right team for your property and to hold the space between them — one brief, one programme, one set of drawings everybody is working from.

How we approach it

We maintain working relationships with a group of professionals and trades we use repeatedly, because familiarity is worth more on site than a keen price. We know how they sequence their work, what information they need and when, and how they behave when something unexpected appears behind the plaster.

For each project we decide which disciplines the job genuinely needs — a modest reconfiguration does not require six consultants — and appoint on merit. Before anyone is engaged we check current insurance, relevant registration or accreditation, and recent work of a comparable type. Where a specialism sits outside our regular circle, such as heritage advice on a listed building or acoustic design in a converted flat, we go and find the right person rather than making do with the nearest available.

Then we brief them together. One kick-off, one drawing set, one programme, and a standing rhythm of coordination so that the engineer's beam and the joiner's cabinet do not both want the same 200 millimetres.

Coordination continues long after that first meeting. Drawings are issued from one place and superseded versions are withdrawn, so nobody builds from a sheet that changed a fortnight ago, and any instruction affecting more than one trade reaches all of them on the same day.

What's involved

• Architects and architectural technologists for design and drawings
• Structural engineers for calculations, details and site inspections
• Party wall surveyors and schedules of condition
• Building control, whether local authority or an approved inspector
• Quantity surveyors and cost consultants on larger schemes
• Lighting designers, audiovisual and smart home specialists
• Landscape architects and garden contractors
• Heritage and conservation consultants for listed and protected buildings
• Kitchen, joinery, stone and specialist finishing trades

In London homes

London projects involve more third parties than the drawings suggest. A leasehold flat brings a managing agent and often the freeholder's surveyor into the conversation, each with conditions on working hours, protection of common parts and evidence of insurance for everyone entering the building. A terraced house brings adjoining owners and, more often than not, their own appointed party wall surveyor.

Boroughs differ in how they administer approvals, in the noise and working-hour restrictions they impose, and in what they allow on the street. Skips, scaffold licences, parking bay suspensions and hoardings all require permits, and lead times vary considerably. Someone has to hold that list and act on it early; on our projects that is us, as part of project management and coordination.

Domestic projects also carry duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015. Where more than one contractor is involved, a principal designer and a principal contractor must be appointed, and the client duties that would otherwise sit with you as a homeowner pass to them. We make clear at the outset who holds each role, and keep the health and safety documentation current for the duration of the works.

Working with us

You should not have to chase a structural engineer for a revised detail, or explain your brief for the fourth time to a new supplier. That coordination is the job. The same principle runs through our interior design and styling and our structural work: one accountable team, one version of the drawings, one programme everybody is measured against.

See the results across our projects, then tell us about your property and we will tell you which professionals it actually needs.