Main contractor and principal contractor: one contract, one company
A surprising amount of London renovation is sold by companies that will not be building it. It is worth knowing which kind you are talking to.
What being the main contractor means for you
You sign one contract, with the company that builds the job. There is no introducer margin stacked on top of the build cost, and there is no second company to point at when something goes wrong.
The distinction matters most at exactly the moment it is hardest to check: when a trade underperforms. A marketplace's remedy is to find you a different trade. Ours is that it is our contract, our programme and our completion date, so the cost of that failure is ours and not yours.
Principal contractor duties, held not passed
On a notifiable domestic project somebody has to hold the principal contractor duties — site safety, coordination of trades, the construction phase plan. On a great many domestic jobs those duties quietly land back on the homeowner, who did not know they had taken them and is not insured for them.
We hold them. It is written into the contract, and the insurance behind it is published rather than described.
The scale we build at
2VP builds high-specification London houses — full renovations, extensions, loft conversions and new builds — and Vladimir's background includes specialist fit-out work at the V&A Museum, Moncler Sloane Street and the South Bank cinema complex.
Capacity is deliberately capped at four concurrent projects. It is the constraint that makes a named project manager on every job and a weekly director visit arithmetically possible rather than aspirational.
Where each of these is evidenced
- Companies House filing, No. 14122250Companies House →
- Insurance held on every projectInsurance →
- The team, namedStudio →
Are you a builder or a marketplace?
A builder. 2V Projects Ltd is the main contractor on its own projects, you sign one contract with us, and there is no introducer fee on top of the build cost.
Do you subcontract the trades?
Some, and we are direct about which — see who is on your site. What does not change is that the contract, the programme and the completion date are ours.
Who holds the principal contractor duties?
We do, written into the contract. On many domestic jobs those duties end up with the homeowner by default, which is not a position anyone should be in unknowingly.
See the range before you speak to anyone.
The estimator gives you a band in a couple of minutes, and tells you how wide it is and why. If you would rather talk it through, that works too.