Turnkey Execution
Design and execution under one roof — no handoffs, no compromises, and one number to call when something needs deciding.
The usual arrangement in interiors is that a designer draws and a contractor builds, and the gap between them becomes the client's problem. Drawings get interpreted. Substitutions get made quietly. When something does not match the render, the designer blames execution and the contractor blames the drawing, and the person paying for it stands in the middle.
We removed that gap by keeping the site team in-house. The carpenters, civil team and supervisors building your home work for the same studio that designed it, which means the person who drew the detail is reachable by the person cutting it. On a full home we are typically coordinating nine trades on site, and coordination is most of the job.
You get one point of contact, weekly photographic updates, and site supervision twice a week. What gets handed over is what you approved in 3D, because there was nobody in between to reinterpret it.
What's included
- Single point of contact for the whole project
- Detailed execution drawings issued to every trade
- Civil work — demolition, masonry, plaster, waterproofing, levelling
- Electrical and plumbing, coordinated against the approved layouts
- False ceilings, cornices and cove detailing
- In-house carpentry — wardrobes, kitchens, storage, panelling
- Painting, polishing and specialist wall finishes
- Flooring, tiling and stone installation
- Weekly progress reports with photographs
- Staged quality checks at civil, carpentry and finishing
- Snagging, rectification and final handover
How it runs
The studio's four phases, applied to this service specifically.
- 01Discover
Surveying what is really there
Before execution is priced, the site is surveyed properly — levels, plumb, damp, existing services, and whatever the previous contractor buried in a wall. Most execution overruns trace back to a survey that assumed the building matched its drawings.
- 02Define
Programme and budget
The programme sequences every trade against the others so the site is never waiting. Alongside it sits the line-item budget, and we advise carrying 8 to 10 per cent as contingency — not because we expect to spend it, but because opening up an existing building reliably produces one surprise, and a budget with no slack turns that surprise into a compromise.
- 03Design
Drawings the site can build from
Execution drawings are dimensioned to the millimetre and issued per trade: electrical point drawings, plumbing layouts, ceiling drawings, joinery sections, finish schedules. A site that has to guess will guess wrong, and it will guess in whichever direction is fastest.
- 04Deliver
Building and handing over
Work proceeds through civil, services, carpentry and finishing, with a quality check closing each stage before the next begins. At completion we snag the project ourselves before showing it to you, then work through your list. The snagging window runs two weeks after handover.
Worth knowing
Sequence is what protects a timeline
Interiors fail on sequence more than on any individual trade. Electrical has to be complete before ceilings close; ceilings before painting; painting before carpentry installation, or the joinery gets damaged. A site running out of order looks busy and finishes late. The programme exists to stop that, and it only works if every trade answers to the same supervisor.
What actually causes delays
In our experience, almost never the building work itself. Delays come from decisions pending with the client, materials ordered late, appliance models changed after cabinetry was cut, and society restrictions on working hours or service-lift access. All four are manageable if they are raised at the start, which is why the programme includes decision deadlines and not just construction dates.
The parts you will never see
Waterproofing in wet areas, levelling before flooring, proper conduit runs, and the substrate under a wall finish are invisible and permanent. They are also the first things a low quote removes, because nobody inspects them at handover. They fail eighteen months later, and by then fixing them means taking the finished room apart.
Related work
Questions about turnkey execution
Sometimes, if the drawings are complete enough to build from and we can review them first. We are honest about this: much of what makes our execution predictable is that we drew it, so we know what the detail was meant to achieve. Executing another studio's incomplete drawing set usually costs the client more than it saves.
In stages tied to progress on site rather than to dates, so payments follow work that has actually been completed and checked. The schedule is agreed in the budget stage before any work starts.
Our supervisor is on site twice a week as a minimum, and daily during critical stages such as waterproofing, joinery installation and finishing. You receive photographic updates weekly regardless of whether you can visit.
The snagging window runs two weeks after handover, and we would rather you list everything than be polite about it. Beyond that, carcasses and workmanship carry warranty, and we remain reachable — a fair number of our projects are second homes for people we worked with years earlier.
Related reading
The Golden Ratio Rule for the Best 2D SketchThinking about turnkey execution?
Tell us about the space and roughly where the budget sits. We'll tell you honestly what's possible.