Construction activity falls 13% annually: what to check in a building quote

INE released July’s Construction Production Index on 14 September. The seasonally and calendar-adjusted series fell 13.0% year on year and 0.3% month on month. The figures are provisional. An activity indicator does not measure the price of building your home, so it cannot be used as a discount to apply to a contractor’s quote.

Give every contractor the same brief

When requesting prices, provide the same drawings, specification and scope. Ask each contractor to identify exclusions. A headline rate per square metre might exclude foundations, earthworks or utility connections, while another offer includes some of those items.

Use our guide to comparing construction quotes to organise costs and conditions before deciding. Ask when each quote expires and how changes between pricing and commencement would be handled. The aim is to understand the offer well enough to discuss it with your technical team.

Translate availability into an actual programme

Request a proposed start, a sequence of stages and a list of dependencies. A short advertised construction period leaves open questions about permits, design decisions and delivery of key components. Mark the choices you must make and the dates by which the contractor needs them.

For a factory-built house, put manufacturing, delivery, crane access, ground preparation and site assembly on the same timeline. Factory production is only part of the route to a usable home. Our house-cost comparison tool helps keep quoted and additional costs visible alongside the expected total programme.

Test one realistic change at a time

Enter the current quote in the house-building cost calculator. Identify which figures are confirmed and which remain allowances, then test a more demanding foundation, a utility connection or a longer period of temporary accommodation.

This exercise shows where another piece of information would improve the budget. A ground investigation and topographic survey, for example, can answer site-specific questions that cannot be resolved by a national activity statistic.