Residential development

Quantity surveying and claims support for housing developments, apartment buildings and phased residential schemes.

Commercial challenges and how we approach them

Residential development brings individual homes together with shared structures, external works and infrastructure. A scheme may be procured as one main contract or several trade packages, with expenditure and completion spread across plots or phases. The construction account needs to make those boundaries clear as layouts, specifications and delivery dates develop. This includes build-to-rent and student accommodation, where repeated rooms or apartments sit alongside shared facilities and phased handovers.

Jack Butler-Kettle’s career includes quantity surveying roles with Barratt Developments and Berkeley Group. This is personal career experience, including work before Quantsurv.

Specification changes across repeated plots

The Challenge

A kitchen or façade revision may repeat across plots, but not every plot will be at the same stage. Some items are unordered, some can be cancelled, and others are installed. Applying one rate across the whole development can materially misstate the cost.

Our approach

We map the instruction to affected plots and procurement status. Repeated quantities, cancellations and abortive work are valued separately, with the remaining-phase forecast updated to match.

Shared infrastructure between phases

The Challenge

Estate roads, drainage, substations and communal areas can serve several phases. Package accounts may omit shared work or allocate it twice, particularly when a later phase uses infrastructure funded by the first.

Our approach

We identify shared infrastructure costs separately from plot work and reconcile them across the trade accounts. If phasing changes, we review both the allocation and the delivery assumptions: moving a cost between phases does not itself create additional work, but changing when that work is delivered may affect its price.

Plot handovers before the site is complete

The Challenge

Handing over a home does not complete the estate roads, landscaping or neighbouring plots.

Our approach

We link plot handovers to the contract's sectional provisions and keep an outstanding-work schedule for shared areas. The payment assessment separates completed homes, unfinished site works and any agreed return attendance. This provides a basis for assessing retention and remaining cost without treating occupation as evidence that the whole development is finished.

Utilities and adoption work outside plot budgets

The Challenge

Connection charges, service diversions and highway or drainage adoption requirements may sit outside the housebuilding packages. Changes to these requirements can consume allowances that appeared sufficient when the development was first costed.

Our approach

We reconcile network quotations, adoption-related work and contractor exclusions with the development budget. New obligations are identified against the original allowances, with responsibility and approval recorded before commitment.

Volume assumptions when the build sequence changes

The Challenge

A brickwork or finishing price may assume a continuous run of similar plots. Slower releases or a changed house-type mix can break that continuity, but a reduction in output might also reflect the trade contractor's own resource decisions.

Our approach

We compare the tender sequence, actual releases and labour records. The assessment explains the effect of the changed conditions and tests the claimed cost, rather than applying a general uplift to all remaining plots.