What Beams is and how it works

Your builder manages the build day-to-day; we make the structure around it work.

How a Beams project runs

Every Beams project moves through the same five stages. Your planner walks you through each one as it comes up.

1. Planning. You tell us what you want to do. We give you an indicative cost range and, if it's the right fit, introduce you to up to three vetted builders who match your project type, location, and timeline.
2. Quoting. Your builders visit your home, take measurements, and send their quotes through your dashboard. You compare them side by side and choose.
3. Contract and design. You pay a £1,000 refundable build deposit to secure your builder's time. We generate the Home Improvement Contract (HIC) that sits between you and them, and you sign it digitally. If you'd like design help, our designers can step in for selected stages or run alongside the whole project.
4. Build. Two weeks before break ground, you fund the project into the Beams Account. The build starts. There are four milestones. Your builder marks each one complete, you approve, and we release the corresponding payment.
5. Sign-off and warranty. At the fourth and final milestone, you sign off the completed work. You have a 28-day snagging window to flag anything that isn't right, and the 12-month workmanship warranty starts at sign-off.

If you'd like extra hands-on support during the build, our optional Project Management Support is the upgrade.

What Beams does

We do four things on every project:

• Match you with builders. We vet every builder in the network: insurance, business credentials, references, and a craftsmanship review on a recent site. We connect you with up to three who fit your project type, location, and timeline.
• Generate the contract. Every Beams project uses a standardised Home Improvement Contract. You and your builder sign it; we're not a party to it, but we structure the project around it.
• Hold the money securely. Construction funds sit in the Beams Account and release as you approve each milestone. You're never paying for work that hasn't been done.
• Step in when it matters. If a product is faulty, a delivery is wrong, a milestone is disputed, or a builder leaves the network, we have ways to help. The article When Beams covers costs describes when we step in financially.

What Beams doesn't do day-to-day

Your builder runs the build. They're on site, making decisions, coordinating trades, and dealing with what comes up. We don't run that day-to-day work, and trying to would slow it down. The article What Beams does and what it doesn't do draws the line in detail.

Tools we provide

Alongside the contracts, payment structure, and builder network, we provide a set of digital tools that help you and your builder run the project more predictably:

• AI cost estimator for an indicative cost range from a short project description.
• Appointment scheduling for builder site visits and design calls.
• Quote comparison tool that lays all your quotes out in one place, line by line.
• Product catalogue of partner supplier products with discounts applied.
• Materials tracker, the shared view of what's on order, in transit, and delivered.
• Project dashboard with milestones, payments, contracts, and messages in one place.

You don't have to learn any of this up front. Your planner walks you through whichever tools matter at each stage.

Why we do it this way

Renovation is full of avoidable risk: missed deliveries, ambiguous scopes, money moving before work is done, builders disappearing mid-project. The structure around a build matters as much as the build itself. We exist to make that structure clear and predictable, so you can spend your attention on the choices that actually shape your home.