hawkenobi

Usually if these drawing comes free of charge and your project is less than SGD30K it's highly possible that these drawings are recycled from other projects. As you would suspect the layout, material and items in the drawing do not match the quotation. I did my design with a design consultant with real measurement taken. They provided me with a set of Autocad drawings and 3d drawing. The consultant and myself send out these drawings for quotation. The quotation prices span from cheapest 45k - 66k, based on the same design. We then select the best quote for the project and they help me manage the contractor and their work. My flat is a 5 room resale and I paid 48K for the renovation and 4k for the consultancy fee. The consultant I hired can be found here boxwerx.com

You should get a breakdown quote so every item has a price tag next to it. Or it will be very difficult to determine what needs to change and how much needs to be removed from the quotation. My friend got cheap cheap quotation before and the contractor starts adding things between projects and he paid about the same market rate at the end but didn't like the workmanship and design. It would help if they provide you some drawings too at least you know the end result or else everything can go very wrong without any definition.

You may wanna try my design consultant he does the design with all drawings prepared. Then you are free to send it out to various contractor firm to compare prices, he will also provide oversight of the project so you would not get cheated along the way by rogue contractors who provide cheap quote then try to rob you in between the projects by insisting that they need to add new items to the quotation. His website www.boxwerx.com

Hi, Just wanna share a new way that we all could approach our renovation for our new homes with a method that protect us as the customer from rogue contractors who over charges for their services. I have got my flat early in the year, met a guy who does design consultancy for home owners and offices. He sold me the idea that most renovation customer looks for multiple interior design company for quotation and this workflow does not protect the customer. Well, firstly the interior designer works for the contractor, so it would not benefit a designer working with the builder to protect the client. Secondly, he asked me the question ... how could I determine that one quote is cheaper than the other since it's based on different design? Moreover many contractor does not produce drawings just to save cost and therefore no "black and white" on the final result of your renovation. He offer me the consultancy method where the designer is not affiliated to the contractor and does not receive any commission, because I can choose my own contractor based on the one design he and I have worked out. The design proposal was drawn out in detail and in 3D perspective so it could be sent out for multiple quotation. So instead of having multiple quotation with different design, I can now have multiple quotation based on just one design. As you can imagine with just one design I see quotation with difference close to SGD30,000 This is how over charged most of new home owners are. Although I paid him 4000k ++ for my consultancy job with him, I am glad I did not have issues with my renovation and he made sure that work are done properly so I don't have to manage the site myself, and be concerned about the technical terms or my contractor removing or adding items unnecessarily. Just wanna share and this may help new home owner consider this new way of working so we don't have to become trapped like some of my friends in contractor vs client conflicts. He is a singaporean and has got a website boxwerx.com and if you are interested you can PM me and I will hand you his contact number. Best of luck, Timothy Tay