Construction Management
A hands-on, open-book alternative to design and build — for clients who want to see every cost, stay involved, and share in the risk and reward. You hold the contracts with the trades and materials; we manage the whole build as your specialist, the way an integrated developer delivers its own schemes.
Book a consultationThe model
Most sizeable developers don't hand a scheme to a single contractor on a fixed price. They run an in-house construction-management team that procures each trade package, drives the programme, and controls cost and quality — keeping the control, and the margin, in their own hands.
Construction management brings that same model to your own home. You hold the contracts with the trades and suppliers; Elizabeth Homes runs the build for you — procurement, programme, cost and quality — with everything visible to you, package by package. You see behind the veil, and most clients tell us they finish understanding exactly how a home is built.
Where it comes from
Construction management isn't new, and it isn't experimental. It began in the United States and came to prominence in the UK through the 1980s and 90s, when the era's most ambitious commercial projects — Broadgate, Canary Wharf — were delivered this way. Mace built an entire business on it, using construction management to deliver landmarks like Battersea Power Station, the Tottenham Hotspur stadium and the Tate Modern extension.
For years afterwards, fixed-price design and build became the default, and construction management was quietly treated as something only the largest schemes used. That is changing. In 2026 the £176m renewal of the Barbican was awarded as a construction management contract to a specialist, Blue Sky Building — chosen ahead of some of the biggest contractors in the country. The method its advocates call the most intelligent way to build is firmly back in favour — and it belongs on the right private homes just as much as on landmark ones.
Two routes
Both give you one experienced team and a home built to last. The real difference is who carries the cost risk — and how involved you want to be. Neither is better; it depends on your appetite.
Design & Build
You agree a fixed or capped price and we deliver to it — the simplest, most certain route. Changes are possible, but a fixed-price contract means variations come at a cost.
Best if you want certainty and a single number, and to hand the delivery to us.
Construction Management
You contract the trades and materials directly and see every price; we manage it all. Save on a package and the saving is yours; if one runs over, you're part of the conversation about where to adjust.
Best if you want to stay involved, adapt as you go, and understand exactly where your money goes.
How it works
We build a detailed, open-book budget — every trade package and material cost laid out. Where time allows, we market-test the packages from the planning information, so you know the real range before you commit, not a figure with margin hidden inside it.
We work with your architect and you on layout and products, and produce a detailed specification of everything through our in-house interiors team — so you get the right products, considered from the outset.
Each trade package is tendered and let in your name. You see the prices, we advise, you choose — nothing disappears into a single lump sum.
We run the site day to day: programme, coordination, quality and safety, with our team accountable for delivery — the same discipline used to build out whole schemes.
Design, construction and procurement can run at the same time rather than in a rigid line — so you can start before every last detail is fixed, and finalise as you go without the punishing variation costs of a fixed-price contract.
Risk & reward
Because you hold the contracts, the risk and the reward are yours — a package that comes in under budget is money saved for you, not margin kept by a contractor. That openness cuts both ways, which is precisely why it works best with an experienced hand managing it.
You put your trust in us to procure well, programme tightly and hold quality — and you watch us do it throughout. If a package is over, you're in the room for the decision on how to bring it back. Many clients tell us the real value is what they learn along the way.
What we bring
The procurement, programme and cost discipline used to deliver whole schemes, applied to your one home.
Our interiors team produces a full, detailed specification with you and your architect, so every product and finish is the right one.
Open-book, market-tested budgets and tendered packages — you see every price, not a sealed lump sum.
We charge a management fee for the service, scaled up or down to how involved you want to be — from light-touch oversight to full hands-on management.
Why Elizabeth Homes
Elizabeth Homes is led by a developer with two decades bringing schemes forward across London and the South East — including managing construction the way integrated developers do, with an in-house team delivering the build. It's the same discipline, brought to your project: experienced procurement, tight programmes and honest cost control.
That experience runs to the top of the field. Phil Baily spent years at K2CM, one of the largest construction management firms in the UK, working on the delivery of major schemes — from a landmark offshore-wind manufacturing facility in the North East to residential developments run on exactly this model. Construction management here isn't a service we picked up on the side; it's how we've worked at the largest scale, brought down to a single home.
Questions
Both give you one experienced team and a beautifully built home. The difference is who carries the cost risk. With design and build we take the price risk and deliver to a fixed or capped figure. With construction management you contract the trades and materials directly and carry the risk and reward — while we manage the whole build for you, with every cost visible.
Yes — the packages are let in your name, which is what makes the costs fully transparent. We advise, tender, procure and manage throughout, but the contracts, and the savings, are yours.
You see it early, because everything is open-book. We bring you options to bring it back — adjusting scope elsewhere, alternative specifications, or re-tendering. You decide, as part of the conversation, rather than being handed a variation bill after the fact.
Far more freely than under a fixed-price contract. Because construction management lets design, procurement and construction overlap, changes are handled at cost as we go, rather than penalised as expensive variations.
We can — a full budget and specification agreed up front. Or, where you'd rather get going, we start and finalise the rest as we go. Overlapping the stages the way a developer does is one of the real strengths of the route.
Yes. Our in-house interiors team produces a detailed specification with you and your architect, so the products and finishes are considered from the start.
A management fee for the service, agreed up front and scaled to how much involvement you want. There is no hidden margin in the trades — you see those prices directly.
Not quite. A project manager typically oversees a build where your main contractor holds the trades on an agreed price. With construction management you hold the trade contracts yourself and we procure and run them for you, open-book — so we are project managing the build and doing the buying and site delivery as well. If you already have a builder you are happy with, our project management route may suit you better.
Where we work
We work across Hertfordshire, North & West London, Buckinghamshire and Essex. Open the list for construction management in your town.
Start
Tell us about your project and your appetite for involvement. We'll talk you honestly through whether construction management or design and build fits you better — and what it would look like for your home.
Book a consultation