The people in the room

The Construction Clinic grew out of HXL Construction, a contractor working on domestic extensions, conversions and whole-house renovations across London and the South East.

After years of watching homeowners arrive at a first meeting already anxious — holding three quotes they could not compare and a programme nobody had explained — the Clinic was set up to give that guidance away rather than sell it back.

The sessions are hosted personally, and no part of the evening is a pitch for building work.

Each clinic features a practising designer speaking about the decisions made long before anyone arrives on site.

Planning strategy, permitted development, party wall procedure and the difference between a planning drawing and a construction drawing — the gap that produces most mid-project variations.

A cost specialist walks through the money side of a domestic project: how £/m² rates are built up, what contingency is really for, and how provisional sums and prime cost items behave once work starts.

The same reference data sits behind the cost benchmarks in the Clinic portal.

Every clinic includes a homeowner talking candidly about their own project: what they were glad they did, what they would never repeat, and the moment they wished they had asked for help.

This is consistently the part attendees say changed how they approached their own build.