One — Feasibility

Four separate tests have to be passed at once: the thing must be physically buildable, fundable, capable of consent, and capable of being run at a profit afterwards. A scheme that fails any one of them fails entirely, and the failure is nearly always visible at the start to anyone willing to look for it.

So we test all four before anything is committed, and we report the result rather than the result we would prefer. Plenty of sites do not survive that test, and saying so in week three is the single most valuable thing a development company ever does for a client.

Two — Consent

Planning permission is only the headline. Underneath it sit highways, drainage, environmental health, party wall awards and, on the wrong building, listed or conservation consent. Each has its own officer, its own timetable and its own capacity to stop the job.

We run them as one campaign with one programme, and we talk to objectors before they have committed a view to paper, which is the only point at which talking helps.

Three — Delivery

Contract choice is a risk decision, not an administrative one. Where the design is fixed and the ground is known, the contractor can sensibly carry the risk and price it. Where the building is old and half its condition is guesswork, insisting on a fixed price buys a claim rather than certainty.

Having chosen, we then actually administer it — valuations issued on time, every instruction in writing, and variations priced when they arise instead of accumulating into a final-account argument.

Four — Handover

Commissioning witnessed rather than certified on paper. The people who will operate the building walked through the systems they are inheriting. Operation and maintenance information checked for whether it can actually be used. And the defects period managed to its end rather than left to expire quietly.