Contract and start · Worth care
When does it start and how long will it take?
Get a written programme with a start date, key milestones and an end date.
- When it lands
- Before you commit to moving out, storage or a completion-dependent date.
- What it costs to get wrong
- Undefined timelines are unenforceable. Rent, storage and stress all run on somebody's clock — usually yours.
A start date is not a programme. A programme is the sequence, with milestones and an end date, and it is the only way to know whether the job is late while there is still time to act.
Do not start until the pre-start list is clear
Approvals in place, party wall notices served and expired, contract signed, insurance confirmed, long-lead items ordered, and the specification decisions that affect early work already made.
A builder started on the agreed date with the structural steel unordered. The house stood open under temporary propping for seven weeks waiting for fabrication. Starting on time is worth nothing if the job cannot proceed.
Ask for a week-by-week programme
It does not need software. A single page listing weeks and what happens in each is enough. It exposes the dependencies — steel before the roof, roof before plaster, plaster before the kitchen — and shows you where a two-week slip becomes a six-week slip.
Your deadlines are on the programme too
Programmes fail as often on client decisions as on trades. Ask the builder to mark the dates by which you must have chosen tiles, sanitaryware, the kitchen and the staircase, and diarise every one of them.
Be honest about your own dependencies
If you are moving out, storing furniture, or timing a birth, a sale or a school term against completion, add real float. Domestic projects overrun more often than they finish early, and the cost of an overrun is usually rent, storage and stress rather than construction.
Why this one matters
A programme is also a diagnostic: a builder who cannot sketch out the sequence of their own job has not planned it, and unplanned jobs drift.
Do this week
- Ask for the written programme with a start and end date.
- Confirm the pre-start list is genuinely complete.
- Diarise your own decision deadlines from the programme.
The realistic choices
Simple written programme
A one-page bar chart is enough on most domestic work.
Contractual completion date
With agreed grounds for extension. Stronger, and fair to both sides.
What good looks like
- Dates for the stages that affect your life, not just the finish
- An agreed process for extending time when something genuinely unforeseen happens
Questions worth asking
- What could realistically delay this?
- How much notice will we get if dates move?
From real projects
Started in April, steel arrived in June
A builder started on the agreed date with the structural steel unordered. The house sat open under temporary propping for seven weeks waiting for a fabrication slot. Scaffolding hire, propping and the standing time added £9,700.
The lesson: A start date is only real when the long-lead items are ordered and the approvals are in.
Putting it into practice
What this decision should leave behind
The steps to work through, the paperwork worth keeping and the questions to send your builder today.
- · Do not start until the pre-start list is clear
- · Ask for a week-by-week programme
- · Fix your own decision deadlines
- · Template: Pre-start confirmation
- · Paperwork: Written construction programme
- · Paperwork: Pre-start checklist, signed off
Next decision
How do you handle changes once work has started?