Remote and overseas owners: a build you can run from off-site
A significant share of London renovation is commissioned by somebody who is not in London. That is a process problem, and it is solvable.
What an off-site owner actually needs
Not more communication — better-shaped communication. An owner in Singapore does not need a phone call at 4pm UK time. They need a written record that is complete enough to read at any hour, and a decision queue that does not stall the site while it waits for them.
So the process is built asynchronous by default. The weekly report, the daily photographs and the Friday video walkthrough all land in the dashboard, timestamped. Nothing important is ever conveyed only in a conversation.
Decisions that genuinely need you, and the ones that do not
Before work starts we agree which decisions are yours and which are ours. Finishes, fixtures, anything that changes cost, and anything that changes the completion date are always yours. Sequencing, trade scheduling and buildability are ours.
That boundary is the difference between an owner who is consulted and an owner who is chased. It also means a decision waiting on you is flagged in the Friday report with the date it starts costing programme, so nothing goes quiet and expensive.
Access, deliveries and the things that go wrong remotely
Key holding, deliveries, parking suspensions, the neighbour who needs speaking to about scaffold: on a remote job these are ours to hold, and they are written into the contract as ours rather than assumed.
For owners of a property let or empty during works, we also carry the insurance position for an unoccupied property through the survey stage, because it is the single most common thing an off-site owner discovers too late.
Where each of these is evidenced
- The dashboard everything is published toM2 Managers →
- The reporting cadenceHow we build →
- Insurance held on every projectInsurance →
Can you run the whole project if I never visit the site?
Yes. Several of our jobs run that way. What changes is the record-keeping, not the build: everything is written and photographed rather than agreed on site.
How do you handle approvals across time zones?
Every decision reaches you in writing with options, a price against each and the date it starts affecting the programme. You answer when it is your working day.
Who holds keys and takes deliveries?
We do, and it is written into the contract rather than left as an assumption.
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.