Built by estimators, not a tech startup

Who is Help Build?

Help Build is a construction estimating and project management firm founded by Tony Walker. Over the past 18 years we have costed and delivered hundreds of residential refurbishment projects across the UK, from single property flips to multi-unit HMO conversions.

Our estimating team produces schedules of works, tender documents, and cost plans for property developers, investors, and bridging lenders every week. That work generates a continuous stream of real pricing data: actual supplier quotes, confirmed labour rates, and tested material allowances.

Why we built Refurb Calculator

We kept seeing the same problem. Developers would view a property and have no reliable way to estimate the refurb costs quickly enough to make a competitive offer. They were either guessing, waiting days for a builder to quote, or paying a surveyor hundreds of pounds for a report they might not even need.

We built Refurb Calculator to solve that. It puts our estimating process into your hands so you can walk through a property, tick what you see room by room, and walk out with a full cost breakdown. The rates are the same ones we use on our own live projects.

Where the pricing data comes from

Every rate in Refurb Calculator comes from our live procurement workflow. When we price a job for a client, we get real quotes from suppliers and real day rates from tradespeople. Those figures feed directly into the tool. This is not a database of national averages or figures scraped from the internet. It is what the actual trades charge on real jobs, updated continuously.

Regional cost variance is also built in. A full rewire in London costs significantly more than the same job in the North East. Our rates reflect that, with multipliers derived from our own project data across 13 UK regions.

Tony Walker, Founder