Just so you’re aware, if you really can’t or don’t want to, you can potentially get away with not using a Schedule of Works. Contractors who routinely handle residential renovation projects like loft conversions and extensions are used to clients not being fully clued in and are familiar with what common renovation projects involve. They’ll often already have their own processes, including fairly standardised quotes that they just adapt slightly for any specifics of your project. 

You can therefore potentially present the contractor with only your package of drawings (if they’re detailed enough) and any other required information by email. Typical Building Regs drawings for residential renovation works will tend to include some information covering certain key standards, building methods and materials that are to be used already. The rest is left up to the contractors. 

If your package of drawings doesn’t sufficiently detail those things though, you’d need to spend time discussing them with the relevant contractors so they know exactly what they need to quote for and still aim to ensure that their quote sets out everything in detail and accurately. 

That said, we think that you should prepare a Schedule of Works if you can, or you can have whoever is handling your drawings prepare a Schedule of Works for you (usually for an increased fee). It can be time consuming but there’s a lot to be said for taking the DIY approach for this. 

Firstly, it can actually end up being quicker and easier to prepare a Schedule of Works. It’s very likely that contractors won’t accurately reflect (and therefore won’t accurately price) all details from your drawings, even if those drawings do set out absolutely everything a contractor would need to know. To be fair, this can often be the case when using Schedules of Works too but it’s less likely and using a Schedule of Works at least makes it easier to notice what is or is not factored in correctly. 

Partly it’s just that it takes a lot of time and focus to work through all the information and provide detailed quotes. Things can easily be missed. Mistakes easily made. Partly it’s also because, as mentioned above, contractors routinely handling common residential works are used to these kinds of works and what they entail. They therefore just assume that it’s the usual and don’t really look too closely at all the information from your drawings. This is why trying to get detailed, accurate quotes is like trying to herd cats. 

Secondly, often people leave much more to contractors to work out than they probably should. On one hand, leaving flexibility to contractors in terms of what construction methods and materials are to be used can potentially lead to better value for money if they adopt more cost effective construction methods and materials that still produce a good quality result. On the other hand, well… cutting corners. It opens the door to contractors choosing less good, quicker ways of doing things and using less good materials. Maybe that’s fine for some things, but for key areas of the build it’s really not.

In addition to that risk, some contractors deliberately under-quote in the hope that they’ll get the job and then they try to increase quoted amounts later on, arguing that they only under-quoted because something was unclear or unspecified during the Schedule of Works/quotes stage. The best way to avoid this is to ensure that anything of significance is fully detailed and priced for. 

Another risk of leaving a lot to contractors to work out is that contractor’s usually operate with tight profit margins (of around 20%). That can quickly be entirely eroded just with a few inadvertent but costly on-site errors. The incentive is therefore for things to be done cheaply and not correct errors if they can get away with it. The better job usually entails a more skilled and experienced team and the use of higher quality materials. Both tend to be more expensive. Correcting errors often incurs both labour and materials costs. That’s not to say that some contractors wouldn’t opt for the more expensive way of doing something or to correct any and all errors that occur, regardless of financial impact on themselves. It’s just that the odds of that happening aren’t in your favour. Where key elements are specified up front, you can tilt things back in your direction.

Another issue that can crop up from leaving too much in the contractor’s court is that, while any decent contractor and their team will be familiar with the usual construction methods and materials used for common residential renovation works, those things evolve over time. What was once deemed the best way of doing something using certain materials can quickly become a less good way of doing something. There are also often significant differences from one project to another that are down to preference or some bespoke aspect of the project. If the Schedule of Works and quotes set out specifics, awareness can be raised early.

Fundamentally, you won’t necessarily end up prescribing every little thing in a Schedule of Works, so some flexibility will remain, but it’s wise to specify the key things upfront. 

You could potentially still achieve this by getting draft quotes, seeing what a contractor proposes, then reviewing and talking through with them the various alternative options for construction methods and materials. Then having them revise drafts, repeating the exercise until the quote is finalised. The contractor won’t love you for this though and you may struggle to get any contractor to really engage in that process. They’re busy. They’re also aware that they’re not yet hired. They don’t really want to have to spend many, many hours preparing quotes and discussing all elements of the build with you. They’d usually far prefer it if you worked out things in advance and just told them what you wanted from the outset. In other words, providing good drawings and a relatively detailed Schedule of Works.

Preparing a Schedule of Works can provide clarity on what key construction methods and materials are to be used and help lead to better, more accurate and consistent quotes across multiple potential contractors. 

Thirdly, preparing a Schedule of Works will also help enormously with your general understanding of construction methods and materials, which will be invaluable when reviewing and understanding quotes as well as understanding what’s going on during the works phase. 

Often advice online is just to prepare a detailed Schedule of Works to send out to potential contractors to prepare quotes. It isn’t particularly realistic for a layperson to prepare an effective Schedule of Works without some guidance though. We’ll therefore walk you through how to prepare one. It’ll also be useful information for handling quotes.

Unless you already have a gold star in construction, you’re going to have to go through a bit of a learning curve first. For some people, it’ll be more of a learning mountain than a curve but don’t freak out. Dig deep, it’s time for cat herding school. Use the drop down below to discover more about construction so you’ll be able to understand the substance of Schedules of Works and quotes. If you do already have a gold star in construction, you can skip this.

Even if you don’t end up preparing a Schedule of Works, the reality is that the same information should be reflected in quotes one way or another, given that quotes are effectively a Schedule of Works with costings. If you can wrap your head around the following, you should be in good shape for reviewing quotes also.

What will also aid understanding is asking as many questions as you can of professionals during the planning stage. When you’re presented with drawings, particularly any structural and Building Regulations drawings, try to find out how things will be constructed and what the options are for materials. 

If you’re having Building Regs drawings prepared, those will be very helpful for preparing your Schedule of Works. If you’ve read our Building Regs page, you’ll know now that the Building Regulations set minimum standards, including with respect to the use of certain materials. Your Building Regulation drawings can specify higher standards though and can specify what exact materials should be used, right down to particular brands. You should have conversations with whomever is preparing your Building Regulation drawings about what standards can be achieved and how, as well as what the options are for materials so that those specifications can be reflected in the drawings. 

Watch out for entirely handing the reins over to whomever is preparing your drawings by the way. In our experience, there’s a tendency for them to just throw in whatever they think is best or whatever their usual is, without much regard for cost. Which construction method and/or material is used can directly and significantly affect pricing so you need to get a handle on them to make informed decisions about costs. Otherwise you can easily end up getting quotes that are unnecessarily high purely because the contractors are all quoting for higher end materials that you don’t necessarily need. For example, it’s no good reflecting in Building Regs drawings that you want insulation to achieve standards much higher than the Building Regs require and specifying certain pricier insulation brands if you don’t have the budget to pay the inevitably higher costs. 

The following are just some examples, purely for illustrative purposes. The aim is to give you the background and tools to use to develop your own Schedule of Works using your drawings and knowledge you’ll have built up about what your particular project entails. It’s up to you to be responsible for handling your own Schedule of Works and/or quotes, which are likely to vary in several respects. 

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the below lists reflect the usual in terms of the categories and running order of works. Sometimes things are done concurrently or in slightly differing orders though (for example, maybe some or most of the painting is done before second fix electrics are done). You don’t need to worry too much about that. Just be mindful that Schedules of Works and quotes might reflect things in differing orders and under differing categorisations. Ultimately, they should all cover the same substance. 

Let’s use an example of a ground floor extension with a minor internal reconfiguration to have an understairs toilet constructed.

That’s it. Easy.

(* A note about first fix and second fix. If you have a look elsewhere online, you’ll quickly notice that what constitutes “first fix” work is not clear. It’s one of those terms that different people use to mean different things. Broadly, it’s often used to mean one of two things. Either all work right up to and including when the internal walls are plastered, with all hidden plumbing and electrics done, or the work after the structure (load bearing walls, roof, etc) has been done and weatherproofed up to and including when internal walls are plastered, with all hidden plumbing and electrics done. Our understanding and use is the latter. You should ideally include in your Schedule of Works a side note or footnote as to what you mean by first fix and second fix to try to avoid confusion.)

This last step is the real challenge because it will involve really thinking through all the component parts of the works phase, including any specific construction methods, materials and quantities that need to be specified if not already reflected in your drawings.

Don’t freak out if you’re not yet at the stage of being able to add this next detailed level. Firstly, what is laid out below will similar to what you’ll be aiming for so you can even begin just by copying and pasting the relevant parts and then editing to adapt as needed. Secondly, it can be an iterative process and the very act of working through a Schedule of Works and trying to make it more detailed will bring you much further down the road. As always, if a term or phrase isn’t familiar to you, you’ll probably find that having a quick look online for what it is or what it means will reveal that it’s actually easily understandable. We find that looking at images of construction methods and materials to be particularly helpful for quickly building knowledge.

If you have drawings that set out construction methods and materials, then you can use those to quickly build out the detail of your Schedule of Works. You can also or alternatively cross-refer to those drawings where it’s helpful to do so, rather than repeating information in your Schedule of Works that’s already clear in the drawings. 

If you don’t have drawings or if your drawings omit any pertinent details, where important, you’ll need to be very specific about what construction methods and materials should be used or you leave yourself open to things being at the contractor’s discretion. That would likely result in getting quotes for different things, meaning you won’t be able to compare quotes easily. It also exposes you to those contractors who like to underquote and then seek to increase costs later. In the longer term, it could also easily result in the work done and materials used being less than ideal. 

Beware that many Building Regs drawings used for common residential works may include a fair amount of detail concerning construction methods and materials and sufficient information about dimensions from which quantities can be worked out, but they may not be as complete as full construction drawings. If that’s the case, your Schedule of Works can cross-refer to the drawings for many things but you’ll need to add further detail in the Schedule of Works where useful or necessary. 

Here is our illustrative Schedule of Works again, now with more detail. We use a mix of cross-referring to drawings and/or setting certain things out in more detail so you can see the two approaches side by side. As we’re assuming the use of drawings, those drawings will set out all relevant dimensions so we don’t specify quantities of materials as the contractors would be able to work this out themselves quickly using the drawings. 

When reading through the above, did you notice that it could be more or less detailed in certain places? If you’d like to dig deeper, use the drop down immediately below.

Try to avoid any gaps in information as well as vagaries like “to confirm x, y, z” and “supply and install all electrical fittings (number of fittings to be confirmed)”. If you must include anything like these because you just don’t know yet, it’s best to make clear that the contractor should omit costings for all of those uncertain items and that you (or the professional on your behalf) will ask for updated quotes including those things once they can be reflected properly. Getting cost estimates for uncertain things won’t generally be helpful and will muddy the waters when it comes to comparing quotes.

The foregoing assumes that your Schedule of Works isn’t littered with vagaries and loose ends and that none are for anything major. If you find that you have many or if any are for major parts of the works, probably you’re not yet ready to get quotes and you’d be better off spending more time developing your plans.

An exception to that might be where you want to get the contractors to quote for certain works on a provisional basis only. That can be useful to get pricing so you can then decide if you might instead hire a trade directly to handle that work or DIY in order to save money. It’s better to be upfront about these though, at least for future relationship reasons.

What we’ve done before for work we knew we might do ourselves was to just tell them (verbally, by email or, better, by adding a note to you Schedule of Works) which items we might cut back on to save money if the overall costs were too high. You might see one or two contractors providing quotes with lower costs than normal for those items and increasing other items to cover the difference so that they lose less if you elect to DIY or have someone else handle them but that’ll become obvious side by side other quotes that don’t.

The commonly used written contracts allow for changes to your agreed scope of works with a contractor and require a corresponding price adjustment up or down. They don’t specify how much that price adjustment should be though so, if you think you might want the contractor to take on additional works, it can make sense to pre-emptively include those as provisional works upfront so you can have the contractors ascribe fixed pricing to them before you get to the contract stage. In other words, if you think that you might want them to construct a built-in wardrobe for you for example, you could ask them include it as a provisional works item and provide a fixed cost for it in the quote so that that is what you’d pay if you elect to use them for that additional work later on.

Finally, just to note in terms of presentation, you could use bullets the way we have above or you could put it all into a spreadsheet or set it out in a table in Word. Whatever style you prefer as long as the substance is there and it can be read. If you prepare a spreadsheet or table version, you could additionally consider putting in a column for pricing. The contractors can then just drop in their quoted price for each line item. That would make comparing quotes much easier. Don’t be surprised though if they don’t use your column and instead just send you their usual quote format.