Investment processes
What actually happens between a first enquiry and the keys changing hands — stage by stage, with what is decided at each and what it depends on.
Our investment model page answers which of three routes a project takes. This page answers the question that follows it: what the next several months will actually consist of. The stages below are the same regardless of route — what changes is who brings the land and the concept to the start of it.
Durations are deliberately not stated here. They vary so widely with scheme size, location and the approvals a project needs that a general figure would mislead more than it helps. You are given a project-specific programme once there is a project to build one against.
The stages
First Conversation
What you are trying to end up with, what you already hold, and what your constraints are — budget, location, timing, and how involved you want to be. No cost, no commitment on either side.
Site and Brief Assessment
We assess the plot you hold or search for one that fits the brief: zoning and development rights, title, access, preliminary ground conditions, and what the local market supports. This is the stage where a project is most often stopped, which is the point of it.
Concept and Feasibility
A scheme developed far enough that cost, revenue and programme can be stated as ranges with the assumptions visible. You receive the study, including the parts that argue against proceeding.
Terms Agreed in Writing
Scope, payment stages, cost-risk allocation, programme and reporting intervals set out and signed. What is fixed, what is estimated and what is outside our control are stated separately rather than blended.
Acquisition and Permitting
Land is acquired where it is not already held, and the scheme is taken through the statutory approvals it requires. Approvals, not construction, are usually the longest and least predictable part of a project.
Design and Documentation
Architectural, structural and services design coordinated to construction-ready documentation. Long-lead items are identified and ordered so they do not become the critical path later.
Construction
Execution from foundations to finished building, with quality verifications before work is closed up and reporting against the baseline programme and cost at agreed intervals.
Commissioning and Handover
Systems tested and balanced, defects closed out, documentation, test records and warranties compiled, and the building handed over ready to occupy or to let.
Every stage here exists to make the next one less of a gamble. The ones investors are most tempted to skip are the ones that save the most.
Ready to talk about a specific project, or want to see how the three routes differ first?