Renovation supervision in Croatia
A renovation you cannot visit runs on trust and a messaging group, and that is how a forty-thousand-euro job quietly becomes seventy.
The fix is unglamorous: one written scope, three comparable quotes, a payment schedule tied to stages rather than to the calendar, photographs from the same positions every week, and every change priced before it happens. We do not hold the building contract and we take no commission from the firms. We are there for you, which is the only position from which cost control actually works.
How it runs
- Scope: what is actually being built, written down, with materials named — this is what makes quotes comparable
- Quotes: three firms on that one scope, checked for registration, insurance and finished work you can go and look at
- Instruction: appointed in writing, with dates, stages and payments tied to completed work
- Site: a weekly visit, photographs from the same positions, a short written note
- Inspection concentrated where mistakes get buried — waterproofing before tiling, flashing before the roof closes, first fix before plaster
- Variations: nothing changes without a written price first
- Handover: a defects list with photographs and locations, agreed with the contractor and re-inspected before the retention is released
Why the quotes differ
Most Croatian quotes for the same job are not comparable, and owners read the difference as one firm being cheaper. Usually they are quoting different work: a different tile, a different membrane, screed included or not, waste removal in or out. Writing the scope first collapses that. When the three prices then still differ, the difference means something, and we can tell you what.
Variations are where the money goes
Almost no renovation ends at the contract price, and almost none of that overrun arrives as one big decision. It arrives as a dozen small ones agreed on site, verbally, while nobody is counting. Every change gets a written price before the work happens. It is the least interesting mechanism on this page and the one that saves the most money.
Where we stop
We do not do the building work and we are not the designer of record. We coordinate with your architect and the office handling the permit and keep the paperwork together, but we do not draw and we do not submit. A supervisor who also holds the contract cannot argue with the contractor about an invoice, which is why we hold neither.
Supervision: what owners ask
Do you do the building work yourselves?
Can you get permits?
What does supervision cost against the build?
What kind of projects?
Tell us about the project
What is being built, roughly when, and whether there is a scope written down yet.