BRE - Who better to teach than the people who wrote the damn thing! I have done the BRE course and its pritty good.

Worth the money if you intend to try and sell it as a service, however I would suggest that you look at the huge list of BRE assessors that already have passed and are licensed.

We charge an hourly rate, because it is almost impossible to give a fixed price on a job something like this. We also provide consultancy, and not just assessments so that also increases the amount of time taken to do the job.

Timber

Ok, well yeah from my experience, the BRE are a little slow to respond and get stuff done, but it has all worked out for me with only minimal prodding on my part!

Well, lets say if ALL the information for an assessment alone (no consultancy) were to be provided for a single house, an assessment, result and certificates could be obtained for say 2 - 4k. That would be the pre assessment, interim certificate, post assessment and site visit(s) and final certificate.

The thing is, volume obvoiusly makes things cheaper. Say if you had 5 IDENTICAL houses, the price would barely change from the price of doing one alone!

I think the thing to remember is the amount of work that is actually required! Its a lot!!!

Timber

Indeed its a lot of work. And not just for the assessor! The client (builder, architect etc) will have to do a fair bit of extra work too!!

Providing all the information required in a detailed, logical and comprehensive format is not straight forward.

Project wise, the single self builder may not choose to have an assessment, but can still build to a great standard and know it! CSH is almost in some ways is a bit like a sales tool (currently) for larger builders to make a project 'special'. Soon we will all have to have an assessment and achieve higher and higher levels, but i guess that is all part of the evolution of a new way of building, and will become the norm eventually!

Timber

we have a website at www.code4homes.com and we use this for information gathering for Code compliance, the beauty of the site is it puts a lot of the pressure onto the client and automates a number of processess, we are looking at releasing the software to qualified code assessors in general and would like to hear from any assessors who would be interested in using such a great online tool, the output for your clients will be a grahical overview of where they are up to in their application, it shows them which categories they are strong and the ones where they are weak,it also shows them if they should be applying for a higher or lower rating. The software is available "free of charge" and you only pay a fee per site for the service, which won't be huge amounts. For an overview of the service please visit http://www.code4homes.com and use demo as the usename and password. If you would like to know more email me at d.oldham@thelkgroup.com