Commercial and retail

On a commercial job the paint is a small line in the budget. The expensive part is the trading you lose while the work is happening, so the programme matters more than the price per square metre. That is why most of this work happens at night, at weekends, or in phases: a hotel done floor by floor with the rooms handed back in sequence, a shop painted after closing and open again at nine, an office done over a bank holiday weekend, an apartment block done core by core so residents always have one stairs. We price the hours the job actually needs, including the setting up and the striking down at each end of a shift, because pretending a night shift costs the same as a day shift is how a job runs over. Specification is the other half. Commercial surfaces take abuse that a house never sees: trolleys along a corridor, chairs against a wall, hands on every door frame. So circulation areas get a scrubbable matt or an eggshell that survives a wash rather than a flat emulsion that polishes up wherever someone rubs it. Kitchens, clinics and food premises get a hygienic coating that can be cleaned hard and, where it is called for, one with an antimicrobial additive. Plant rooms, stairs and metalwork get the primer the substrate needs, galvanised and aluminium included, which is where a lot of cheap jobs fail within a year. In an occupied building we use low odour, fast drying materials so a room is usable the next morning, and we do not open a tin of solvent based enamel beside a restaurant at seven in the evening.

Paperwork, and the people already in the building

Before we start you get a method statement and risk assessment, insurance certificates and safe pass details for everyone who will be on site, and a named person to ring. Work over stairwells and in atria is done off proper towers or a scaffold with a permit, not off a ladder balanced on a landing. Fire doors and escape routes stay usable the whole time. Wet floor signage, barriers and a clean handover at the end of every shift are part of the price, not extras, because the difference between a good contractor and a cheap one in an occupied building is what the place looks like at eight the next morning.