Our Process

Quick Enquiry

Stage 1: Make An Enquiry

Your initial pre-screening process is complimentary.

By placing a phone call or an email enquiry with Custom Outdoor Living, you’re obviously looking for help to make your new outdoor lifestyle ambitions come to fruition.

Here at Custom Outdoor Living, we welcome you to make contact with us. We want you to feel completely at home, and comfortable that we are the best construction company to take care of your potential project.

We excel at designing and creating expanded and more practical living areas, so it’s vitally important for us to get to know you, to understand what your goals are, and then ascertain exactly what you’re after first.

Here’s what you can expect:

We’ll ask you some questions – such as the location of your project – so that we can Google Map the details and explore the true dimensions of your property and any existing buildings. We’ll then need to ascertain if you’re after a new Alfresco, a Sunroom, an Extension, a Verandah, or a Patio or Decking.
We’ll offer you our professional advice as to whether your ambitions are plausible, and that includes checking to see if your proposal has any alarm bells regarding building regulations, siting issues, and/or bushfire zone requirements. We’ll also ask you about when you’d like your construction completed by.

If everything is on the right track, we can then proceed to the next stage and organise an In-home Consultation with one of our expert Custom Outdoor Living Designers. You’ll benefit from our customised expertise – and we’ll come to you! Please note: a call-out fee applies for this In-home Consultation.

Stage 2: We’ll Come To Your Home

Your formal onsite consultation.

Once your preliminary enquiry questions have been asked and answered, and you’re serious about taking things further with us, we’ll be happy to arrange for our Design Consultant to visit you in the comfort of your own home. At this time, we request that any key decision makers and stakeholders are present, so that we can truly get the whole picture of your new dream outdoor area. We’ll have already visualised your concept and done some research on your property, so to explore your space, see the reality of what we’ve already discussed, and value-add with an onsite meeting brings a whole new sense of actual plausibility to the fore. This is your opportunity to truly understand and see what is possible.

In this meeting, we’ll:

Brainstorm for ideas together and give you the benefit of our experience and design expertise by firstly assessing the area. We’ll take informal measurements of your space and ascertain the existing conditions that may impact on any design options that you (and we) have in mind.
Hand-sketch some concepts based on the reality of your situation, and begin mapping out any potential pitfalls and problems that might need to be resolved.
Showcase a selection of our previous projects to give you a taste of our capabilities, and feed you some ideas that can enhance your physical area further.
Discuss your dream ideals, give you an estimation of what those dreams may cost (in reality) and then work with you to establish a healthy budget and options of what you can expect to achieve, so that we can get your project underway. We want you to feel at ease with any decisions that might follow by knowing what’s involved, and how much it is going to cost.
Discuss, in deeper detail, what comes next, how our building process is handled, and share with you information about our reputation for excellence and complete customer satisfaction.
Answer any other questions you have so that you feel confident about entering into a formal agreement with us at Custom Outdoor Living, knowing that we understand your personal sense of style, and that we’re committed to delivering a customised solution that complements your home and family lifestyle for many years to come.
When all of the above has been said and done, we’ll discuss and detail our Preliminary Design Agreement process.

Stage 3: Formalised Concept & Planning Begins

Your Customised Design Process.

Kicking your actual project into gear is the next stage, and here we’ll take your concept and bring it alive with our Preliminary Design Agreement process. This, in turn, becomes a Formal Design Agreement and we’ll completely customise everything from here on, to truly get your project underway. At this time, it is always wise to have on hand any available property or house plan information. Then, working to the budget we’ll have already discussed, we follow a three-step process. This will involve:

Step 1:

Consultancy to finalise the Design Brief
Checking provisional Town Planning / Building Dispensation information
Establishing if a copy of the original house plans are available. Sourcing these plans (if they are unavailable) will incur an extra fee.
Downloading relevant Titles, Subdivisions and Covenants that apply to your property • Sourcing Council Property information
Assessing easement information if required. Additional fees may apply.
BAL assessment if required. Additional fees may apply.

Step 2:

Soil Testing and a further Site Assessment of existing conditions will be conducted to gather relevant information
We’ll assess any logistical issues that may affect the construction (such as landfall, the need for restumping, drainage issues, etc.)
Then we’ll establish if the services of an Engineer are required. If so, additional fees may apply.

Step 3:

One set of Conceptual Drawings (including the site, elevation and floor plan) will be drawn and provided • We’ll carry out provisional costings, and
Our Custom Outdoor Living Design Consultant will book another appointment with you, and any other key stakeholders, to review the now formalised concept, provisional costings, and possible permitting issues.

Step 4:

Once any issues are resolved and changes are decided upon, we’ll then proceed to the Contract Signing stage, before submitting official Permit Applications and seeking the relevant approvals for your new outdoor living project.

Stage 4: Building – Project Management

Now we make it happen.

Once your Building Permit has been issued, it’s time for our professional Custom Outdoor Living team to show you how efficiently we can get on with the construction phase of your project.

Your Project Manager will regularly meet with you onsite, and address any issues or concerns that you may have throughout the entire construction period.

The Project Manager’s role is to physically keep a close eye on things, communicate effectively with you, take care of any planning and materials coordination requirements (to keep your project on schedule as much as possible), and ensure that our Quality Control and safety standards are adhered to. They will also ensure that all mandatory and regulatory inspections are carried out by Council, as per the schedule, and at the required intervals.

As a Registered and Leading Builder in Melbourne, with over two decades of experience, we use a targeted set of processes to systematically step through each stage of the building construction, and you can feel assured that we’ll make ourselves available to answer any questions you have along the way.