Same floor plan, same quote, same muddy block. A builder, a designer and a site supervisor each see things you do not, because someone showed them once. These guides are that someone. Real sizes, the thing the pro checks first, and the question to ask.
The first thing a builder checks is the overall dimensions against the block, then the wet areas. If the bathrooms, laundry and kitchen sit close together, the plumbing is short and cheap. If they are scattered to four corners, someone was drawing rooms, not a house.
ReadA supervisor reads the site plan from the levels down. The little numbers scattered across the block are spot heights, and the difference between the highest and lowest one is the whole story. Under 300mm across the house footprint is an easy block. Over a metre and someone is building retaining walls.
ReadThe pro turns straight to the exclusions and the provisional sums. A short exclusions list and few provisional sums means the builder has done the homework on your block. A long list means the price is a starting point and the real number arrives as variations.
ReadThe pro looks at what is about to be covered up. Every stage buries the last one: the slab hides the plumbing, the plaster hides the frame, the tiles hide the waterproofing. Photograph everything the day before it disappears.
ReadA designer reads a plan by walking through it in their head from the front door: where do the keys go, where does the pram go, can you see the telly from the kitchen, where does the washing dry. The plan that fails that walk is the one that looked great on the brochure.
ReadA supervisor stands at the front boundary and looks at the ground level against the footpath, then walks to the back and looks at the fences. If the neighbour on the high side has a retaining wall and the one on the low side does not, you are about to pay for one.
ReadThe builder skips to the summary of major defects, then searches the document for the words "further investigation", "unable to inspect" and "safety hazard". Everything else is maintenance.
ReadThe pro listens for whether the answer is about physics, money or process. "The beam will not span that" is physics. "That is a variation" is money. "We do not do that at this stage" is process. Only one of them is a real no.
ReadThe supervisor asks for the inclusions list before going in, then walks the house comparing what is in front of them to what is on the page. The gap between the two is the real price of the house they are standing in.
ReadThe pro reads the classification line first, then the reactive movement number the report gives it, then whether the holes were drilled on your block or borrowed from next door. A class M on a real bore log is a number you can build to. A class M assumed off a neighbouring site is a guess wearing a suit.
ReadA supervisor reads the footing plan alongside the soil report, because the two have to agree. The report says how reactive the ground is, and the slab drawing has to be the system that class demands. If the report says H2 and the drawing is a thin class M raft, someone has priced the wrong slab, and you find out with a crack, not a phone call.
ReadThe pro watches the handover points, not the individual days. Frame cannot start until the slab has cured. Plaster cannot start until the frame is inspected and the rough-in is signed off. Every delay that matters happens at one of these handovers, where one trade is waiting on another to finish and be checked.
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