Issuing the construction documents to the builder, establishing how questions will be handled, and setting the rhythm of site meetings.
The question almost nobody asks out loud until the contract is nearly signed: where do we actually live while this happens. It is a real cost — often three to six months of rent, sometimes more — and it appears in almost no published renovation budget. That omission is part of why tender prices feel like an ambush.
The plain answer on a Queenslander being raised is no. Once the house is off its stumps there are no services, no safe access and no stairs, and neither the builder nor the certifier will have you in it. On a rear extension where the existing kitchen and bathroom stay live, staying put is sometimes workable — and it is always slower, dustier and harder on a family than people imagine in the planning of it.
The rest of this step is procedural and short. Before the noise starts, settle how questions get asked and answered, who can instruct the builder, and how decisions get written down.
Budget the rent before you budget the joinery. It is the line that sinks projects quietly.
Establishing the communication protocol before construction starts — instructions through the architect, questions logged, decisions recorded — prevents the informal side-conversations that quietly rewrite a project. Under the CAA the client agrees to issue instructions to the builder only through the architect.
The nervous excitement of the first day, and the need for someone to have set it up properly. Clients want the build to feel organised, because its disorganisation is the thing they've heard the horror stories about.
The builder starts with an incomplete set and a verbal understanding. Everything is agreed in the driveway and remembered differently. There is no record, so there is no way to establish what was actually agreed when it matters.
We set the rhythm before the first day rather than after the first argument. Instructions to the builder go through me, questions get logged, decisions get recorded. That sounds formal for a house, and it is what keeps On Site workable across six to twelve months — a build with no protocol consumes unbounded hours, yours as much as mine. Everything agreed in the driveway is remembered differently by every person who was standing in it.
It depends entirely on what is being done. If the work is a rear extension and your existing kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms stay intact and separated from the site, it can be done. If the roof is coming off, the floor is coming up, the services are being replaced, or the whole house is being lifted, it cannot. Be honest with yourself about the middle cases too. Living on site adds weeks to a program because the builder has to work around you, and those weeks cost money — sometimes more than the rent you were trying to avoid.
No. A raise disconnects the house from its stumps, its plumbing, its power and its stairs, and it is not habitable while that is happening or while the new lower level is being built underneath. Plan to be out from before the lift until the new structure below is complete and services are reconnected. That is commonly a several-month window rather than a few weeks. Get an indicative figure from your builder at tender stage, put a rent number in your budget with a margin on it, and check whether your lease can flex if the build runs long.
For most Brisbane renovations the build itself runs somewhere between six and twelve months, and how much of that you have to be out for depends on the type of work. A raise or a whole-house strip usually means the entire period. A rear extension might mean a shorter window around the connection and the wet areas. Two pieces of advice. Ask for the answer as a range at tender stage, not after the contract is signed. And budget for the top of the range, because a lease you cannot break is a worse problem than a fortnight of overlap.
The contract is executed, the builder's insurances and home warranty cover are in place, the certifier is engaged and the inspection schedule is set. The builder mobilises — fencing, site amenities, temporary power and water, protection of what is staying. The full construction set is issued to site with the drawing revisions recorded. There is a pre-start meeting to agree how questions and instructions will be handled and how often anyone visits. That meeting is worth taking seriously. Almost every dispute I have seen on a residential site traces back to something agreed casually and remembered differently.
Set one channel and use it. Instructions to the builder go through one person — under the standard client architect agreement, that is the architect, and it is there to stop you and the builder quietly rewriting the contract between yourselves. Questions get logged, answers get written down, and anything agreed on site gets confirmed by email the same day. It feels bureaucratic in week one. By month six, when someone says that was always going to be a different tile, you will have the email that settles it in about forty seconds.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.