Preconstruction for UK homeowners
Renovome writes the brief first — scope, an indicative cost range, a programme on the England & Wales working calendar, and the risks that quietly blow budgets. Then every professional prices the same document.
It is the discipline commercial projects have used for decades. Private clients have never been given it. Free, for homeowners, for good.
Free, no account, nothing collected. Four answers and the brief is on screen.
01The problem
You decide you want a side return, a loft or a whole-house refurb. Then comes six to twelve months of fog. Is it allowed, is it affordable, and what happens first?
So you do what everyone does. You post in a Facebook group, you have three builders round on a Saturday, and you get back three prices that are not for the same work.
One is missing six line items. One has padded the contingency. Neither has flagged the structural issue, and none of them mentioned the party wall award that will take eight weeks you have not planned for.
The problem was never the builders. It was that nobody wrote down the job.
What you are handed today
Meanwhile every decision, quote, drawing and risk lives in an inbox. Six months later nobody remembers what was agreed, or why.
02The artefact
An example brief for a real kind of project: a Victorian terrace in SE22, a 24 sqm side return, and a homeowner who said £80,000. Every number states what it is based on, and nothing here is presented as certain.
Brief · rv-0248 · revision b
Terraced house, Victorian · SE22 · drafted 14 March 2026
Nine lines shown of the forty-one in this example. Every professional prices the same forty-one.
£89,000–£125,000
Construction and fees
VAT included
What this is based on
Construction is 24 sqm at £3,100–£4,200 per square metre, a south London rate, so £74,400–£100,800. Professional and statutory costs add £6,100–£13,000, roughly 12%. Contingency at 10% adds £8,100–£11,400. That totals £88,600–£125,200, rounded here. It is indicative, and it narrows once drawings and a drain survey exist. Your stated budget sits below the range, which is the most useful thing this brief tells you today.
40 weeks, including 3 weeks contingency
England & Wales working calendar
The red bar is the party wall award. It runs eight weeks and it is not in anybody’s quote.
Your neighbour’s flank wall is affected, so an award is likely. Notice periods and a surveyor take 6–8 weeks, and most people discover this after they have appointed a builder.
Mitigation
Serve notice in week 8, before tender. Budget £900–£3,200 for surveyors: an agreed surveyor at the low end, one each at the high end.
A side return on a Victorian terrace usually crosses a shared drain. Building over it needs a build-over agreement from the water authority, which adds around 4 weeks.
Mitigation
CCTV drain survey at design stage. Carry the diversion as a provisional sum, not an assumption.
Fabricated steels are quoted at 6–8 weeks from approved drawings. Ordering them when the groundworks finish is what pushes a programme into the next season.
Mitigation
Place the steel order in week 24, at the same time as the foundations are set out.
Anything not known yet appears here rather than being quietly guessed. Each unknown widens the cost range, and the brief says by how much.
An example, drafted to show the shape of the document. Your brief is generated from your property, your works and your postcode, and stays private until you choose to send it.
Fig. 02The moment
Three minutes earlier they knew nothing. Now they know something a professional would have told them in a paid meeting.
The risks section is where it lands. A shared drain under the side return. A neighbour’s flank wall. A steel lead time that decides whether you are watertight before winter. These are the things that move a price by tens of thousands, and they are almost never in the quote.
Renovome names them in your terms, on your project, with a mitigation next to each one. That happens before you are asked for an email address.
03How it works
The first box in the workspace
You describe the project the way you would say it out loud. Renovome reads it back as facts, so you can see it was understood.
How big, roughly. When you want to start. What worries you most. Each one has a plain not-sure answer that costs you nothing.
About four minutes later you have the document above: scope, an indicative range with its working shown, a programme, and the risks nobody mentioned.
Five matched professionals — architects, structural engineers, contractors and trades. One document, five people, the same job described the same way.
The brief renders before anyone asks for an email address. You are saving something you can already see.
The workspace, the brief, the programme, the risks and the directory are free for homeowners. That is the model, not a trial.
Your brief is private. No professional sees it, and nobody calls you, until you choose the shortlist yourself.
04For professionals
You are paying £400 to £1,800 a year for one-line enquiries, then spending unpaid evenings working out what the client actually wants before you can price anything.
Renovome sends you a brief a homeowner has already shortlisted you for. Scope, budget band, programme and risks attached. Before you pay a penny you see the postcode area, the project type, the budget band, the intent and how many other firms were shortlisted.
And when an unscoped enquirer of your own turns up, you send them your invite link instead of doing a free scoping call. They come back with a brief you can price, and you earn two free unlocks for it.
£10
Small Job brief
One payment, VAT included
£20
Major Works brief
One payment, VAT included
The workspace opens on buildwise-plan.co.uk. Renovome is the new name for it, and the rename is in progress.
05What happens next
Create a project, describe it in plain English, and the brief, the programme and the risk register are generated from it. Ask Wes about your own job rather than about houses in general.
It is free, there is no card, and nothing is shared with any professional until you choose to send it. If you are a professional, the directory is where you claim a profile.
Four answers, no account. The brief appears on screen before anything is asked of you.
Built on
Twenty years of commercial preconstruction, brought down to the scale of one house.
Scope definition, cost planning, programming and risk registers are ordinary practice on a large construction project. They are the reason those jobs get comparable tenders. Renovome is that discipline, delivered by software, to the person standing in their own kitchen.
