One point of accountability from dig to final coat, with every core trade in-house.
Main contracting
The Lynch Brother Group is a commercial main contractor in Oxford, appointed by businesses, institutions and developers to deliver their projects as one accountable team. We deliver offices, laboratories, schools and pubs and restaurants across Oxfordshire, as main contractor and principal contractor, on traditional, two-stage and design and build routes. Send us the brief or the tender pack. We will say whether it is a project for us and what we need to price it.
Programme, buildability and sequencing advice while the design is still moving, so the price in the contract reflects how the building will be built.
Site management, health and safety, welfare and logistics run by our own site team, with one point of accountability for the whole project.
Excavation, foundations, drainage and masonry by our own teams, with steel and concrete frames by specialist contractors under our management.
Roofs, cladding, external wall insulation and render, windows and doors, so the building is weathertight on the date the programme says.
Partitions, ceilings and floors, then decorating and finishes: the trades that decide what your people see, done by the group that built the frame.
Power, data, lighting, heating and ventilation coordinated and installed to the programme, then tested and commissioned as one package rather than trade by trade.
Building-control sign-off, O&M documentation and a clean handover, then a defects period and planned maintenance from the people who built it.
You give us the brief and what the building must do. As a commercial design and build contractor, we take the design and the build as one contract. We appoint or take on your design team and take responsibility for the design, so you have one price, one programme and one point of accountability.
Your consultants design the project. We price it and build it. On a two-stage route we join early under a pre-construction services agreement (PCSA) and work up the programme, the packages and the cost plan with your team before the price is fixed.
Where a national contractor holds the client's contract, we deliver packages within it: structure, envelope, screed, render, insulation and finishes, with the same site discipline we bring to our own projects.
Most main contractors manage subcontractors. We manage our own trades. Structure, screed, render, insulation and decoration are delivered by teams employed within the group, priced by the people who will build them and run to a single programme by one site team. When the sequence changes, the trades that usually slip are ours to move.
Commercial work in Oxford is rarely on an empty site. It is a college quad with students in residence, a laboratory next to one that is still running, a shop that is trading, or a residential scheme for a developer with neighbours on three sides. We plan logistics, noise and deliveries with you and with your neighbours, and we build the sequence around the life of the building.
Consultants appointing a main contractor, directly or through a framework, will want to check us. We work under JCT forms of contract and report to your quantity surveyor and project manager on programme and cost. Ask us for our pre-qualification pack.
The group's other services sit inside main contracting when a project needs them: commercial new build construction for a new building, fit out and refurbishment for an existing one, and retrofit and decarbonisation where energy is the brief. You see one contractor throughout. If you are still choosing the route, our article Design and build or traditional: choosing the route sets out what each asks of you.
Science & Laboratories
Lab fit out and refurbishment
Workspace & Offices
Cat A, Cat B and full building refurbishment
Retail
Shopfitting and fit outs that open on time
Hospitality
Refurbishments designed around trading hours
Education
Schools and colleges; summer works a speciality
Student Accommodation
Build and refurb, timed to the academic year
Residential Development
Multi-plot schemes, groundworks to handover
Heritage & Listed
Conservation-grade work on period buildings
How a project runs
Every project is priced and programmed from its own brief. Send us yours.
Main Contracting
Main contractor and design and build partner
New Build Construction
Offices, labs, education and residential development
Fit Out & Refurbishment
Cat A, Cat B and full refurbishment
Dilapidations
Strip out, repairs and making good, for tenants and landlords
Retrofit & Decarbonisation
External wall insulation, render systems and energy upgrades
Screed, Render & Insulation
Liquid screed, spray rendering and external wall insulation
Decorating & Finishes
High-end decorating and tiling — the final finish
Property Management & Maintenance
Planned maintenance for landlords and businesses
From the site office
A main contractor holds the building contract with the client and is responsible for delivering the whole project: the programme, the site, the trades, the quality and the handover. It either employs the trades itself or appoints and manages subcontractors. It answers to the client and their consultants for cost, time and safety. In our case the core trades, structure, envelope, floors and finishes, are in-house, so contractor and trades are one team.
They are two roles, often held by the same firm. The main contractor holds the building contract. The principal contractor is a role under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, known as CDM: the client appoints one on any project with more than one contractor, to plan, manage, monitor and coordinate health and safety. Where we hold the main contract we hold both roles, so the firm running the programme is accountable for the site.
Design and build is a procurement route in which one contractor takes responsibility for both designing and constructing the project under a single contract. The client sets out the brief and what the building must do, and the contractor develops the design and builds it, carrying the risk of the two fitting together. It suits clients who want one price, one programme and one point of accountability, and works best when the brief is clear before signing.
Three ways, usually. On a traditional route the consultants finish the design and invite tenders on it. On a two-stage route a contractor is chosen early on quality and preliminaries, its site and management costs, then fixes the price under a PCSA once the design is developed. On design and build the contractor is appointed on a brief and takes on the design. Public bodies often use a framework: a panel of pre-qualified contractors, each project awarded without open tender.
A pre-construction services agreement, or PCSA, is the contract under which a main contractor joins a project before the main contract is signed. It sets out, and usually pays for, the contractor's early work: programme, buildability advice, package procurement and cost planning, alongside the client's consultants. It is the first stage of a two-stage tender. At the end of it the contractor submits a fixed price for the works, and the client decides whether to proceed to the main contract.
Something else on your mind? Ask us directly.
Planning something serious — commercial, residential or a property portfolio that needs looking after? Send the outline and we'll take it from there.
