New home construction in Barbados

What a turnkey build with us covers

From a cleared lot to the day you put a key in the door. You have one contract and one person to ring, rather than eleven trades who each blame the last one.

• Pre-construction. Site walk, ground assessment, budget reality check and a written scope before anyone draws anything expensive.
• Drawings and approvals. We work with your architect or bring one in, get the structural engineer involved where the design needs it, and lodge the Town Planning application.
• Groundworks and foundations. Clearance, excavation into rock, footings, reinforcement, damp protection and the ground floor slab.
• Structure. Blockwork, columns and ring beams, reinforced concrete floors where specified, and the roof structure tied down into the walls properly.
• Roof. Timber or concrete, with fixings and strapping specified for hurricane wind uplift rather than for what is quickest.
• Services. First fix and second fix electrical and plumbing, water tank and pump, waste treatment or suck-well, and the applications to the utilities.
• Finishes. Rendering, screeds, tiling, joinery, kitchen, bathrooms, painting, ironmongery and external works.
• Handover. Joint snagging walk, snags closed, then the file: approvals, certificates, guarantees and as-built information.

What actually drives the price

Every house is priced on its own merits, because no two sites cost the same to build on. These are the things that move a price, and the ones worth talking through before anyone puts a figure on paper:

• The ground. Solid coral rock is a good bearing surface and a slow, expensive one to excavate. Sloping sites add retaining structures. Soft or made ground adds engineering.
• The roof. A simple hip on a rectangle costs a fraction of a cut roof over an irregular plan with valleys, dormers and a vaulted ceiling.
• Service runs. How far the water, power and waste have to travel to reach you, and what has to be dug through to get there.
• Specification. The gap between a sound, well-built house and a high-specification one is almost entirely in what you can touch: joinery, tiling, sanitaryware, ironmongery, glazing and the kitchen.
• Access. If a concrete truck cannot reach the pour, everything costs more and takes longer.

None of that can be priced from a desk, which is why we come and look first.

How long it takes

For a straightforward single-storey family home, expect the build itself to run around eight to twelve months once you are on site, with several months in front of that for drawings and approvals. A much shorter programme usually means the approvals have not been counted in. We give you a programme with dates against stages, and we tell you when one moves.