SANDWOOD Design & Build Ltd

Construction & Buildings Sandwood provides a full range of services to its clients. This includes finding sites, feasibility studies, value engineering, tendering and negotiating, constructing teams, construction and post contract support. We can advise on a number of areas including planning, sustainability, scheme development standards, sound and air tightness, as well as design, cost and buildability. Every organisation can list its values on its website or brochure, but it does not make them part of the company’s ethos. Values cannot be dictated by a senior management team, or drawn up by a consultant. They must be evident in the way the company’s employees and managers act on a day to day basis. Underpinning much of what we try to do is our commitment to a directly employed labour force at both site management and trade level, and the extent to which they are consulted and involved in the company. We have an excellent highly skilled workforce which takes pride in its ability to produce a high quality product. The vast bulk of our work is Design and Build, so the team we have to manage under the contract includes architects and other consultants, as well as our employees and other subcontractors. We are used to establishing good relationships with them to resolve the usual problems of providing good design within tight and unyielding budgets. Quality is not only important in terms of the product offered to clients but it provides job satisfaction and a focus for everyone within the company. It is a fundamental Sandwood belief that everyone wants to produce their best and will do so given the right environment and encouragement. We prefer to be involved in a project from the outset. This helps us build a team from the beginning, allows us to understand the design, and advise on practical buildability issues. We do not charge any pre-contract fees, even though our involvement with some projects can extend over several years. We are a relatively small company for the size and type of contracts we undertake, which enables us to give greater senior management attention to each one. Of the four senior managers, two are generally allocated to each project at the outset and will see it through to the end – no marketing department at the beginning and no claims department at the end. Our business strategy is to work with a small number of repeat clients and this gives the company a clear client focus and a non adversarial partnering approach. Most construction companies do not follow our model of direct employment, preferring subcontractors, agency staff and the self employed. There is without doubt a cost implication to our approach because of the Tax and National Insurance system. We believe we offset the cost disadvantage through higher quality, greater productivity and reduced waste, but we have to work hard to be more efficient than our competitors in the industry. We consider all our employees members of our quality management team, and believe the key to quality is a committed, employed labour force and experienced, motivated subcontractors. Our subcontractors are subject to formal review by our site managers as well as senior management, which enables the results of quality monitoring to be fed back into future jobs. Our employees believe they are the best. They hate their work being considered defective. We specialise in Social Housing and have done so for nearly 15 years. This has enabled us to build up a level of knowledge and expertise in one sector, rather than a superficial understanding of many. Specialisation has advantages in the advice and assistance we can provide to our clients. We bring years of Social Housing construction experience to the process, both in the office and on site, from Scheme Development Standards, to low cost methods of achieving EcoHomes or code credits. The organisation has a clear focus on the social housing sector and its position within the market as a provider of highest quality, sustainable solutions. The vision is to operate within the sector at the highest level, providing a level of service, responsiveness and quality which is unique and which marks Sandwood out as a desirable supplier. I would like to express my sincere thanks for your considerable efforts at Boatemah Walk to help further the sustainable development agenda in Lambeth. It was a pleasure for me personally to work with you. The keenness and experience of yourselves and your team were invaluable and facilitated the smooth incorporation into Boatemah Walk of a number of features which have helped to further public and professional understanding of housing sustainability incalculably. The organisation has a clear focus on the social housing sector and its position within the market as a provider of highest quality, sustainable solutions. The vision is to operate within the sector at the highest level, providing a level of service, responsiveness and quality which is unique and which marks Sandwood out as a desirable supplier. Sandwood is an outstanding organisation serving as an example of how it is possible to achieve excellent people management practices within the construction industry and to operate in a really forward thinking way. There is a multitude of good practice in place ... which helps to focus the efforts of team members into a committed, value-driven and high quality unit. When we won the Fresh Ideas for Low Cost Housing Competition with The Peabody Trust, it was one of our first significant public projects. As a young practice working on a partnering commission, we were highly dependent on the quality of the contractor. Sandwood contacted us at a very early stage and explained their team working ethos. They described the building to us in terms of its key design ideas. This is unusual for a builder. They reassured us that they would support the design throughout the whole development process. They kept their word.