What a proper refurbishment specification should include

sk three London builders to quote for the same refurbishment and you will receive three prices for three different projects. Not because anyone is lying, but because the document they priced from left too much unsaid. The specification is where a refurbishment is actually defined — and most of the ones we are shown are not specifications at all. They are wish lists with measurements.

A proper specification is a control document. Its job is to make the project mean the same thing to everyone who touches it: the client, the architect, the contractor, the joiner pricing a single staircase. Where it succeeds, disputes have nothing to feed on. Where it fails, every gap becomes a negotiation, and every negotiation happens at the worst possible moment — mid-works, with trades on site and money already spent.

Start with scope, stated in both directions. What is being done, room by room, element by element — and just as deliberately, what is not. Exclusions are not pessimism; they are honesty about boundaries. If the loft is untouched, say so. If the client is supplying the sanitaryware, say so, along with who unloads it, stores it, insures it, and answers for it when a basin arrives cracked. The unwritten boundary is the one that ends up costing someone.

Then the drawings, and a clear rule about which document wins. Plans, sections and elevations for anything structural or spatial; setting-out drawings for joinery and stone; schedules for doors, ironmongery, sanitaryware and finishes. Where a drawing and the written specification disagree — and on a live project, eventually they will — the specification should state which governs, so the answer is a sentence rather than an argument.

Assumptions deserve their own section, written candidly. Every price rests on assumptions about what is behind the plaster, under the floor, inside the wall. A specification that pretends otherwise is hiding risk inside the contract sum, where it cannot be seen until it goes off. State what has been assumed — that joists are sound, that the existing electrical supply has capacity, that asbestos is absent because a survey says so — and state what happens to price and programme if an assumption fails. Provisional sums are acceptable for genuine unknowns; they are not acceptable as a place to bury unfinished thinking.

Materials and finishes need names, not adjectives. Not “quality timber flooring” but the species, the grade, the board width, the finish, and the acceptable tolerance. Not “premium paint” but the manufacturer, the range, the colour reference, and the number of coats. Every adjective in a specification is a future disagreement; every product reference is one removed. The same goes for services: consumer unit specification, circuit allowances, the make of underfloor heating manifold — the things that are invisible at handover and very visible five years later.

Programme and payment belong in the document too, tied to each other. Stage payments should follow defined, inspectable milestones — completion of first fix, completion of plastering — never the calendar alone. A payment schedule that pays by the month pays for time. A payment schedule that pays by the milestone pays for work. The difference sounds small and is everything.

Finally, the variation procedure: the single clause most likely to decide how the project feels in month four. The specification should state, in plain language, that any change is priced and approved in writing before the work is carried out, what happens to the programme when a variation lands, and who is authorised to instruct one. A project with this clause honoured has no surprise invoices. A project without it has little else.

A document like this takes two or three weeks to assemble properly, and owners sometimes balk at spending them before a single tool is lifted. But those weeks are the cheapest in the entire project. Every pound of ambiguity removed on paper costs ten removed on site. We would rather lose a fortnight at the start than a relationship at the end.

We read specifications for a living and write them the way we wish more arrived. If you have one ready for pricing — or a project that deserves one and does not yet have it — send it over, and we will give you our honest view of where it stands.