Seven kinds of work, and exactly what each one includes.

Residential construction

Houses from three marla up to four kanal, anywhere in Lahore district — new build on an empty plot, an added storey, or a demolition and rebuild.

Most owners come to us with one of three questions: what will it cost, how long will it take, and can I buy the material myself. So residential work is organised around those three answers rather than around a menu of features.

Choose the contract shape first

Typical programme by plot size

Add six to eight weeks for a basement, and three to four weeks if the plot has to be cleared of an existing structure. These are working months — a programme that runs through July and August will lose slab and plaster days to rain, and we show that in the bar chart rather than hiding it.

Commercial construction

Shop-and-office plazas, showrooms, godowns, clinics, private school blocks and small factory sheds — usually on a live commercial road, usually with neighbours trading throughout.

Commercial work is not a bigger house. The loading is heavier, the spans are longer, the approvals are stricter, and the owner is losing rent for every month the building is not finished. We programme these jobs backwards from a handover date and build the sequence around it.

Considerations on a trading street

• Access and delivery timing. On Ferozepur Road or in Kot Lakhpat you are not getting a transit mixer in at 11am. We schedule pours early morning or at night, with prior arrangement for road occupation.
• Neighbours. Party walls, existing shops' foundations, and signage that has to come down. We survey and photograph adjoining structures before excavation so that a pre-existing crack does not become our claim to settle.
• Dust and smog restrictions. During Punjab's smog emergency, cutting, grinding and open excavation get restricted. We build the interruption into the programme.
• Cash flow. Commercial contracts are billed monthly against measured work as well as at stages, so an owner financing from rent has a predictable outflow.

Structural & RCC work

The part of the building nobody sees again after it is finished, and the only part that cannot be corrected later without breaking something.

We build to a structural drawing prepared or checked by a registered engineer — not to a mistri's memory of the last house he did. Where an owner arrives with an architectural drawing only, we get the structure designed before quoting; on a double-storey house that costs a small fraction of one column and settles the steel quantity honestly for both sides.

Standard specification, residential and light commercial

Concrete — columns & slabs	3,000 psi minimum, residential; 3,500–4,000 psi for commercial and long spans
Cement	OPC 53 grade — Maple Leaf, DG Cement, Bestway or Fauji, named in the BOQ
Reinforcement	Grade 60 deformed bar to PS 1879 — Amreli, Mughal or Agha Steel, with mill certificate
Coarse aggregate	Margalla crush, ¾″ nominal for slabs and beams, 1″ for footings
Sand	Coarse Chenab sand for concrete, washed; Ravi sand not accepted for structural work
Cover	3″ to earth-facing footings, 1½″ columns and beams, ¾″ slabs — on cover blocks, not on stones
Shuttering	Steel or ply-faced; sides struck at 24–48 hrs, slab props left 14–21 days by span
Curing	Slabs ponded 14 days minimum; columns wrapped and wetted 7 days
Testing	Six cubes per structural pour, broken at 7 and 28 days at an independent laboratory

Also under this heading

• Adding a storey to an existing house — after checking the existing footings and columns actually carry it
• Column and beam jacketing, dowelling and non-shrink grouting
• Crack investigation and structural repair reports
• Retaining walls, ramps and basement raft slabs
• Steel-frame godown and shed structures with RCC bases

Concrete works

From a 40-cft footing to a 2,000-cft raft in a single continuous pour, site-mixed or ready-mix, with the result measured rather than assumed.

How a pour runs

1. Mix design and material approvalRatios set for the member and the season; cement, crush and sand approved and stacked before the day is fixed.
2. Steel checkBar diameters, spacing, laps, stirrups and cover blocks checked against the schedule and photographed. Nothing is poured over unchecked steel.
3. Shuttering checkLevels, props, plumb and joint tightness. A slab that leaks grout at the joints loses strength exactly where you cannot see it.
4. PlacingSite mix by drum mixer and hoist for small work; transit mixer and boom pump where the volume or the access demands it.
5. CompactionNeedle vibrator, systematically, without over-vibrating and separating the mix. Honeycombing at a column base is a compaction failure, not bad luck.
6. FinishingScreeded to level, floated, and falls set on roofs and terraces so that water leaves the building where it is supposed to.
7. CuringPonded fourteen days on slabs, hessian-wrapped and wetted on columns. This is where most Lahore concrete quietly loses a third of its strength.
8. Testing and handover of resultsCubes broken at 7 and 28 days; the laboratory report goes to the owner with the stage bill.

Masonry & plaster

Brickwork, block work, boundary walls and plaster. The trade that decides whether your house looks straight, and whether the paint survives the second monsoon.

Lahore is a brick city and first-class kiln brick is still the sensible wall for a house here — it is available, it is cheap by comparison, it takes plaster well and it moderates the heat. What varies wildly is the quality of the brick and the discipline of the laying.

What we accept on site

Brick	First class (awal) kiln brick, well-burnt, sharp arrises, ringing sound; over-burnt and under-burnt rejected at the truck
Mortar	1:4 cement–sand for load-bearing and 9″ work, 1:6 for 4½″ partitions
Laying	Bricks soaked, joints 10–12 mm and raked for key, maximum 4 ft height per day, plumb checked each lift
Plaster	½″ internal (1:5), ¾″ external (1:4), 1:3 to water tanks and wet areas
Straightness	Checked with a 10 ft aluminium patti in both directions; corner beading at all external angles
Curing	Plaster kept wet 7 days; masonry wetted daily until plastered

Common failures we design out

• Hairline cracks along the line where brickwork meets a beam or column — we fix galvanised mesh over every such junction before plaster.
• Rising damp and salt bloom in the first three feet of wall — proper DPC at plinth, and no brick stacked in standing water on site.
• Hollow plaster that sounds drummy when tapped — caused by dry brick and rushed lifts, and it is why we soak and why we limit the daily height.
• Boundary walls that lean after two years — piers at proper centres and a coping, not a bare 4½″ wall trusted to stand up on its own.

Foundations & earthwork

Demarcation, excavation, footings, plinth and damp proofing — plus basements, retention and dewatering where the design calls for them.

Most Lahore plots give firm sandy clay somewhere between four and six feet, and a shallow isolated footing on well-compacted ground is entirely adequate for a double-storey house. But "most" is not "yours". Old inner-city plots hide filled wells, abandoned septic tanks and soft made-up ground; land near the Ravi belt carries a high water table; and a plot that was a dumping ground for five years needs the fill taken out, not built on.

1. Demarcation and setting outPlot corners verified against the approved site plan and the neighbours' walls, with the owner present. Errors found here cost nothing; found at plinth they cost a wall.
2. Test pits and bearing checkTrial pits at the corner and centre. Where the ground is doubtful, a soil investigation before the footing sizes are finalised.
3. Excavation to levelCut to design depth, bottom trimmed by hand and not left open through rain. Spoil stacked clear of the edge.
4. PCC blinding1:4:8 lean concrete, 3″, so that footing steel never sits on soil.
5. Footing steel and column startersMesh, cover blocks, and starter bars set to the grid and held rigid — not pushed into wet concrete afterwards.
6. Backfill and compactionIn 9″ layers, watered and compacted. Loose backfill is the reason floors settle and skirting lifts away in year three.
7. Plinth beam, DPC and termite treatmentContinuous plinth beam, damp-proof course, and anti-termite treatment of the fill before flooring base.

Turnkey building projects

One contract, one contact, one bill of quantities — from the approved map to the day you are handed the keys and the completion certificate.

Turnkey suits owners who are overseas, who work full time, or who simply do not want to spend eleven months buying steel and chasing an electrician. It costs more per square foot than managing the trades yourself, and it should — you are transferring the coordination risk to us.

Not included in a turnkey price

• LDA / DHA plan approval and commercialisation fees
• LESCO electricity and Sui Northern gas connection charges and security deposits
• Architect's design fee, where you appoint your own
• Furniture, curtains, appliances and soft landscaping
• Solar system and lift, unless separately priced in the BOQ

All of these are listed as excluded in the contract itself, with an indicative figure, so nothing arrives as a surprise at handover.

Stages and payment

No stage payment is due until the work for that stage has been measured and certified — by our quantity surveyor, and by the owner's own engineer if you appoint one. We encourage that. An owner who has someone independent checking our measurements is an owner who never has to argue about a bill.

Ask for a turnkey estimate Contract & guarantee questions