Before the build starts

By the time the drawings are finished, most people are ready to see a skip bin in the driveway. And fair enough. You've been making decisions for the better part of a year. But there's one more stretch between Construction Documentation and the first day on site, and it's worth understanding because this is the stage where the right decisions protect you for the entire build.

Here's what happens after the design phases wrap up, and before the build begins.

The Building Permit
We covered the difference between planning and building permits in an earlier post, but as a quick refresher: the planning permit was about whether you could build what you proposed. The building permit is about how it gets built, and it's issued by a private building surveyor, not the council.

The building surveyor reviews the full construction documentation set, along with structural engineering and energy efficiency reports, and confirms the project complies with current building regulations. You engage the surveyor directly, and they stay involved through the build, carrying out mandatory inspections at key stages like footings, framing, and final.

Timeframes vary depending on the surveyor and the complexity of the project. Your surveyor can give you a realistic picture when you engage them. What we can tell you is that a complete, well-resolved drawing set moves through this process with far fewer questions than a thin one. It's one of the quiet payoffs of doing Construction Documentation properly.

Finding the right Builder
Choosing a builder is one of the most consequential decisions of the whole project. This is the person your project lives with every day for the better part of a year, and the relationship between you, the builder, and us needs to work.

We usually recommend starting this conversation earlier than people expect. A builder who sees the project during Design Development can flag buildability issues, give an updated cost check, and start thinking about lead times before the documentation is even finished. Some of our best project outcomes have come from builders who were involved early.

What to look for is fairly consistent: registered with the Victorian Building Authority, experienced in your project type (a builder who mostly does new volume homes is not automatically right for a heritage renovation), able to show you recent comparable projects, and willing to let you speak with past clients. Just as important is the less measurable part. How they communicate. Whether they ask good questions about the drawings. Whether you can imagine a hard conversation with them going well, because over a year-long build, there will be at least one.

The Tender Process
Tendering is how the project gets priced. We send the full construction documentation set to a shortlist of builders, usually two or three, and they each price the same scope.

That last part matters more than anything else in this section. The reason we tender off a complete documentation set is that every builder is pricing the same thing. When quotes come back, the differences reflect the builders themselves, not different guesses about what's included. Without that, you're comparing a detailed price against an optimistic one, and the optimistic one usually wins the job and makes up the difference later.

When the tenders come back, we help you compare them properly. That means looking past the bottom line at how each builder has treated the provisional sums and prime cost items (allowances for things not yet fully specified), what's excluded, and how realistic the construction timeline is. A suspiciously low number is usually low for a reason. The goal isn't the cheapest builder. It's the right builder at a fair and honest price.

Estimated duration: builders typically need 3 to 4 weeks to price a project properly. Rushing this stage produces rushed numbers.

The Contract
Once you've selected a builder, the agreement gets formalised in a domestic building contract, usually a standard HIA or Master Builders contract. In Victoria, most residential projects run under a fixed price contract, which means the price is locked in before work starts and can only change through documented variations.

A few things worth knowing. Builders in Victoria must hold domestic building insurance for projects over $16,000, and you should sight the certificate before signing. The contract sets out the payment schedule, tied to defined stages of the build. And it's the document everyone returns to if something is disputed, so it's worth reading properly. For larger projects, having a construction lawyer review it before signing is money well spent.

This is also where the full drawing set proves its worth one more time. The contract references the documentation, which means what you were promised is what the builder is legally committed to delivering.

Two agreements, not one

The building contract gets all the attention at this stage, but there's a second agreement being put in place alongside it: the one between you and us.

For the construction stage of a project, we formalise our engagement through a client architect agreement (we use the ArchiTeam Client Architect Agreement, the standard form developed for small practices like ours). It sets out in plain terms which services we're providing through tendering and construction, what they cost, and how changes to scope are handled. If you've followed our process this far, you'll recognise the logic: everything in writing, everything agreed before it happens, no surprises.

It might seem like paperwork on top of paperwork, but the two agreements do different jobs. The building contract governs your relationship with the builder. The client architect agreement governs ours with you, and it's what defines our authority to act on your behalf once the build is underway.

Decide on construction support now, not later
Which brings us to a decision that's best made before the build starts, not after: whether we stay on through construction.

Construction administration is the phase where we act as your representative on site, and under the agreement it covers a defined list: periodic site inspections checking the work against the documentation, reviewing the builder's submissions and shop drawings, administering variations and obtaining your approval before they proceed, assessing the builder's progress claims before you pay them, preparing defects lists ahead of practical completion, and inspecting the rectification work through to the final certificate.

Here's why the timing matters. If we're going to administer the contract, the building contract should say so from the start, so the builder prices the job knowing their claims and variations will be reviewed by the people who drew the project. That knowledge alone tends to sharpen tenders. It also means we're in the room for the contract negotiation, when the payment schedule and timeline are being set, rather than inheriting whatever was agreed without us. Signing on for construction support after the contract is executed is possible, but we'd be working within arrangements we didn't help shape.

We'll cover what construction support actually looks like week to week in the next post. The short version: the drawings protect you on paper, and this phase is what protects you on site.

So how long does a renovation take in Melbourne, all up?
This post and the design phases post together hold the full answer. From accepting a fee proposal, the design and approval phases typically run 10 to 12 months. Add tendering, both agreements being signed, and the building permit at 4 to 6 weeks. Then the build itself, which for a substantial renovation or extension typically runs 8 to 12 months depending on scope.

Realistically, from first conversation to moving back in, most substantial projects take around two years. We know that's longer than most people hope. But every stage exists to protect the outcome, and the projects that try to skip stages are consistently the ones that end up costing more time, not less.

What Comes Next
Once the contract is signed and the permit is issued, the build begins, and our role shifts into construction support. What that involves, from site meetings to variations to the moments where the drawings meet reality, is the subject of the next post.

If you're partway through design and starting to think about builders, or just want to understand how this stage works for your project, we're always happy to start with a conversation.