Is renovation a project?

Yes, a renovation is a project, and treating it as one is what keeps it on budget. A project has four things: a defined scope, a fixed price, a programme with dates on it, and one person accountable for the lot. Take any of those away and what you have is a string of trades turning up and invoicing, which is where budgets die.

We run every renovation as a managed project. We survey the property first, agree the scope in writing, then give a fixed quote. The price we quote is the price you pay. Once work starts, I check progress against the programme every week, book trades so nobody is stood waiting on anyone else, and price any change before the work happens, not after. You get one point of contact, and it is me.

That week-to-week discipline matters more than most people expect. On a whole-house renovation of a Victorian terrace there might be two hundred decisions between strip-out and handover: socket positions, door swings, tile layouts. Left unmanaged, each one costs a day here and a day there, and the plasterer turns up before the electrician has finished first fix. Managed, they get answered in the weekly walk-round and the programme holds. One client in Sydenham asked to move a radiator halfway through the job. We priced it, added a day to the programme, she signed it off, and there was no argument at the final account. That is the whole difference between a project and a mess.