How to write a great brief

The following page aims to help you see that having a floor plan and written brief handy is hugely beneficial for all involved.

The Whirlwind

What is running through the mind of a builder during their first visit to your home? It goes something like this: The builder turns up, on time of course, and is greeted by you. There is a brief introduction and in a matter of seconds they are off with their shoes and tiptoeing around your house desperately trying to absorb and process a vast amount of 3-Dimensional information as you gesture to various parts of your house describing how you would like to see them changed. All the time they are juggling a tape measure, a pad, a pencil and a hot cup of tea and frantically trying to jot everything down in an organized fashion whilst thinking to themselves; now is probably a good time to draw that floor plan with some little arrows pointing from all these scribbles�. They continue to nod and answer all your questions that you must have answered or else! (They could ask you to put a wash on for half an hour or so whilst they properly draw everything up but that's out of the question right?).

Then as you rush to remember all the things that you need done, the builder, seeking confirmation you are finished, announces "OK, great, I've got everything I need" and proceeds to promise to meet your deadline for the provision of a full and accurate estimate within the next few days. And off they go.

Now, back at HQ the builder, having done their very best to get as much information as possible, sits down to convert their notes in to an estimate. They are usually fairly accurate but there is always something that did not make it on to the pad and as they don't want to nag you with silly questions they get on with it and lo and behold what do you know, errors slip in to their estimate which, although the builder does not expect to be the final version, is presented as their commitment to you based on the whirlwind they were just a party to.

Upon receipt of the estimate you then rightly draw attention to the fact that the builder has missed some point or other and included something you did not want and so on. Without putting too fine a point on it this leads to bigger problems down the line and should be avoided at all cost, or more importantly at your cost!

Our Advice

Try and follow these steps to make the whole experience more pleasant and productive for yourself:

• Try and obtain a floor plan of your house, the one from your estate agent that you got when you bought the house will do. If you don't have one, try and draw one, you may not be Albrecht Durer but the result is likely to be a lot more accurate than the builders.

• Also produce a written scope of works, don't worry about technical parlance, the builder will understand, at least this will have been thoroughly thought out and comprehensive.

• Try and write your scope of works in order of what you want to see change in each room and in the order you are likely to walk round the house with the builder.

• Be sure to write down all the important questions you want to ask but may forget on the day.

The Benefits

You may see writing a brief and finding floorplans a lot of work that the builder should do but believe you me it has its advantages, such as:

• Help you clarify what you want to see happen

• Help your builder focus on how best to help and advise you instead of trying to take what is actually quite a large technical brief in a very short space of time under difficult circumstances.

• Help you, and the builder, to be more relaxed so you may even have time for a bit of personal banter, important given they may be in your house for a couple of months

Also, if you have these documents prepared in electronic versions you can email them to the builder before they arrive, that way they have some time to prepare and think ahead of how best to achieve what you want and may be able to arrive with a ballpark figure and programme in their mind.

And last but not, definitely not, least...

This method means that you can provide each builder with the exact same information to work from on the day allowing you to actually compare how good their respective advice is. It also means you will receive like for like quotes from each and so be able to establish which ones represent true value for money!

Perhaps in the future builders will have a fancy gadget that scans your house, writes a brief, prices it up and produces a programme all whilst you have a cuppa and get to know each other however, for now at least, a floor plan and a brief is more than adequate to help you both on your way.