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Why Greenwood

The part of the build nobody sees is the part everything depends on.

Why Greenwood

Built on Experience.
Delivered with Integrity.

Groundworks is the part of a build nobody sees. It is also the part everything depends on. We treat it that way: planned properly, delivered safely, and finished to a standard we’d put our name to. Because we do.

We work for private clients, architects, main contractors and developers in Gerrards Cross, Beaconsfield and the villages around them.

Every groundworks firm in the country claims these five things. Here is what we mean by each of them, on site, where it actually shows.

Twenty years of property development and construction, on projects around the world. Brought home to the villages of Buckinghamshire.

Where we come from

Greenwood Groundworks is a family business. Behind it sits more than two decades in property development and construction internationally. The kind of work where the programme is measured in years, the drawings come by the box, and the ground under a scheme is investigated long before anybody breaks it.

That experience is now pointed at something smaller and closer to home. A large development demands the survey read properly, the setting out checked twice, the drainage designed rather than guessed. The same discipline goes into a single plot in Gerrards Cross, a basement dig in Beaconsfield, a driveway in Penn.

Working locally changes the job in one important way. On a development, nobody lives next door yet. Here they do, and they were here first. The lane is theirs, the verge is theirs, and the noise is in their week as well as yours. We plan the work around that, because we are not passing through. This is where we are from.

What that means for your project

A big-project background shows up in unglamorous places: paperwork that exists before the machine arrives, levels recorded as we go, a programme you are told about when it changes rather than after. Groundwork is the one trade whose mistakes get buried on the same day they are made. Everything we do is built around not needing to dig anything up twice.

Working In Buckinghamshire

We Know This Ground

Groundworks in places like Gerrards Cross, Beaconsfield and the Chalfonts come with their own rules. And their own neighbours. We plan for all of it before a machine arrives.

Green Belt & the Chilterns

Much of the countryside round here sits in the Green Belt, with the Chilterns National Landscape close by. Excavation, drainage and landscaping works here need doing sympathetically, and with the paperwork in order before ground is broken.

Conservation Areas & Protected Trees

Many of the area’s best streets are conservation areas, and mature trees often carry preservation orders. We plan digs, root protection and access around them, so the character that makes these plots valuable is still there when we leave.

Private Roads & Tight Access

Gated plots, private roads and narrow frontages are normal here. We plan machine sizes, deliveries and muck-away routes around the realities of the site, not the other way round.

Neighbours & Considerate Working

On high-value streets, how a site is run matters as much as the work itself. Clean roads, sensible hours, protected drives and neighbours kept informed. It’s all part of the job, not an extra.

How We Work

How a Job Is Run

Whether the client is a homeowner, the architect running the job or a main contractor with a programme to hold, the order of events is the same. This is it, from the first visit to the day we hand over.

1

Before Anything Is Priced

A visit, in person. We look at the access before we look at the drawings. What will get down the drive, where a lorry can stand, which way the spoil leaves. Then the levels, the trees, the drain runs and the boundaries. Where the foundation design turns on what the soil is doing, trial holes get dug and the engineer sees them before a number goes on paper. A price written from photographs is a guess with a letterhead on it.

2

Setting Out

This is where a job is won or lost, and it happens before anything is dug. Pegs and profiles off the engineer’s and architect’s drawings, levels taken from one fixed datum on site, boundaries and easements checked against the title plan rather than against the fence. Where the drawing and the plot disagree, and now and then they do, it gets settled on paper first. Not corrected in concrete later.

3

The Dig And The Inspections

We dig to the drawing, keep the excavation clean and dry, and book the inspections in. Building control looks into the open trench before any concrete is poured, and drainage is inspected as it is laid and tested, air or water, before it is covered. Notice periods are set by your building control body, so those calls get made in advance rather than on the morning. Nothing gets poured or backfilled ahead of an inspection to save an afternoon.

4

Running The Site

How a site is run is visible from the pavement. Roads swept, wheels washed, drives boarded and protected, materials stacked instead of scattered, plant shut down at sensible hours, and the neighbours told before a noisy day rather than after it. Deliveries and skips planned around the school run and the bin round. Soil leaving site goes with a registered carrier, described accurately, to somewhere licensed to take it. The transfer notes are kept for two years, which is the law and also the only proof anyone has.

5

When Conditions Change

Sooner or later they do. Made-up ground, a live drain nobody had on a plan, water at a metre down, roots under the formation. When it happens, work stops on that element, we photograph and record what is actually there, and you get the options priced against each other before we go on. A variation is agreed first and carried out second. Never the other way round, and never explained after the invoice.

INSURANCE

Greenwood Groundworks carries £10 million public liability insurance. Ask to see the certificate rather than take anyone’s word for it, ours included. Any firm worth hiring will hand it over without hesitating.

Any firm looks good on a straightforward week. The measure of one is what happens the day the ground disagrees with the drawing.

WHAT YOU SHOULD HAVE IN WRITING

  • A price broken down by stage (dig, muck-away, concrete, drainage, slab) so you can see what each part of it costs.
  • The rate that applies if the dig has to go deeper than drawn, and who makes that call on the day.
  • Who is notifying building control, and which inspections the programme allows time for.
  • Where the spoil is going, who is carrying it, and how many loads the price assumes.
  • At the end: concrete delivery tickets, drainage test results, recorded levels and waste transfer notes.

Ask us for all of that. Then ask whoever else you are pricing against for exactly the same. The answers will tell you more than any website will.

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