Paving

Driveways, walkways, parking areas and the hard landscaping around buildings, laid to fall so water goes where it should. The panel prices the base as carefully as the surface, because paving that fails has almost always failed underneath.

On an estate the instruction is usually a road or a parking area that has sunk, heaved or been cut for services and never properly reinstated. Arabella scopes the sub-base, the edge restraint and the drainage with the paving, and the quote says which of the three is the problem.

Quotes state the sub-base depth and compaction, the block or slab specification and the edge restraint, so two prices can be compared on what is under the surface. Reinstatement after services and the drainage tie-ins are itemised rather than assumed, which is where paving quotes usually diverge.

Estate roads are done in sections with access kept open and residents told the programme in advance, and the panel's contractors carry the cidb civil registration that municipal or engineered specifications call for.