Cost plus contracts

[Nick1c]

We are having our foundations put in on this basis (+10%) by the contractor who will be putting up our frame. I live 10 minutes away from the site and will be keeping a very close eye on things. There will be  'full transparency' - itemised costs, agreed labour/machinery rates etc. I have some help in this in that a good mate is building a (much bigger) house 30 mins away, he runs a non-local building company and is doing his own project management. Another good mate who runs another building/civils company is a couple of hours away and has offered to look things over. 

Once the ground rules have been agreed the obvious things to keep on top of are:

Ensuring workers are there when they say they are & working productively. 

Minimising trips to the BM (I will do this as often as possible when it is needed)

Checking to make sure materials costs are competitive. 

Keeping tabs on 'management costs'. 

 

I am am thinking about buying a Brinno, partly for security, partly as a record of the build & partly for peace of mind over this. 

 

Any my other tips would be very welcome, together with details of successes/failures of similar arrangements and why it worked or didn't. 

[Alex C]

The only people I have spoken to that have done cost + have really regretted it. If you are going to have to double check prices on everything you might as well order them yourself. Builders tend to just use their favoured merchant as scouring the internet and suppliers for bargains is just not what they are going to be interested in, especially when they can just chuck 10% on everything anyway.