How we run a prime London refurbishment

very refurbishment that goes wrong in London goes wrong the same way. Not loudly, and rarely all at once. It goes wrong quietly, weeks before anyone notices — in a specification that was never finished, a programme that was never written, a variation that was agreed on the stairs and priced after the fact. By the time the symptoms show, the cause is buried under three trades' worth of finished work. This piece sets out how we run a project so that does not happen. It is the firm's founding note, and the standard we expect to be held to.

It starts before the contract. Pre-construction is where a refurbishment is actually won or lost, and we treat it as a working stage, not a sales exercise. Before anything is signed we want the drawings resolved, the specification complete, the long-lead items identified, and the programme built around reality — including the realities nobody likes: party-wall notice periods, borough working-hour limits, the eight-week lead on a bespoke kitchen, the fortnight a lime float coat needs before it will take a finish. A programme that ignores these is not optimistic. It is wrong.

Procurement runs on the same discipline. Every item with a lead time longer than the stage that needs it gets ordered against the programme, not against the moment someone remembers. Joinery, stone, ironmongery, sanitaryware, specialist glass — these do not appear in a week, and a project that waits until it needs them has already lost a month. The procurement schedule is written at pre-construction, agreed with the client, and tracked in writing for the life of the job.

On site, the works are sequenced as one programme rather than seven trades negotiating in a hallway. Strip-out and structure first, behind protection. Services routed and tested before anything closes them in. Wet trades given their drying time — actually given it, not promised it. Joinery, flooring and decoration moving through the property zone by zone, each room signed off before the next is opened. The sequence is not a preference. It is the difference between a finish that lasts and a snagging list that never ends.

Each project is led by a Project Director — not a rotating cast of managers, but one person who knows the drawings, knows the client, and answers for both. They are the first call when something needs deciding and the name on every report. Specialist trades are brought in for what they are genuinely best at, and they are coordinated and managed under Cubitt Wren: one point of accountability, whatever the trade.

Every Friday, the client receives a written report. Photographs of the week's work. Progress against the programme, stated plainly — ahead, on, or behind, and if behind, why and what is being done. The variations log. The decisions we need from the client, with the date we need them by. The next week's risks. It takes discipline to write this every week, which is precisely why it is worth insisting on: a firm that reports weekly cannot hide a problem for a month.

Variations are where most London refurbishments lose their owners' trust, so our rule is absolute: variations are priced, put in writing, and approved before the work is done. Never after. A client should never learn the cost of a decision at the invoice. If something is discovered mid-works — and in period buildings, something always is — the works around it continue while the variation is priced, so the programme holds while the decision is made properly.

Handover is a stage, not a goodbye. Snagging is walked jointly, room by room, against the specification rather than against goodwill. The documentation pack is real: as-built drawings where things moved, warranties, appliance registrations, paint schedules with exact references, and the maintenance notes a well-built house deserves. Then a twelve-month defects period, with the same Project Director on the other end of it. We do not disappear at practical completion, because the building does not stop being ours to answer for just because the scaffolding has gone.

None of this is complicated. That is rather the point. Running a refurbishment well is not a matter of genius; it is a matter of doing ordinary things in the right order, in writing, every single week, without exception. The discipline is the product. The finish is what the discipline looks like when the dust sheets come off.

If you are planning a refurbishment and want to see what this looks like applied to your own drawings, send them over. We will give you our view in writing — including the risks we would plan around — before you commit to anything.