Residential earthworks and site works

On a residential block the earthworks are rarely the hard part. The program is. Every day the pad is not ready is a day the slab crew, the brickies and everyone behind them are standing still, and that cost lands on you rather than on us.

We work the sequence as one job: clear the envelope, cut the block down to the platform level on your site plan, build the sand pad up in layers, and compact it. Test results come back before the pour, not after it, so nobody is standing on a pad wondering whether it will pass.

Two blocks in the same suburb can price very differently, and it is almost always what is under them. The Bassendean sand through the northern and eastern growth corridors cuts and compacts easily. The Spearwood belt out towards the coast sits on Tamala limestone, which turns a routine site cut into a rock job. The Pinjarra Plain along the eastern margin is reactive clay that goes to mud in winter. The Hills are laterite over granite, with duricrust and floaters to break.

We walk the block before quoting and price for the ground you have. On a sloping lot that means saying early how much fill is coming in, how much retaining the levels will need and whether there is rock in the cut, rather than leaving any of it to turn up as a variation.

Builders do not change earthworks contractors over price. They change over a contractor who does not turn up. We book the dates we can genuinely hold, and if something moves you hear it from us before it affects the trades behind us.

You get one supervisor across your jobs rather than a different number each time, which matters when you are running several blocks at once and need someone who already knows the sites. We sequence around your surveyor, your retaining contractor and your slab crew so the block is handed over ready, not almost ready.

Most residential blocks need an earthworks contractor twice: once before the slab, and once after the trades have finished. Splitting that across two contractors means two mobilisations, two inductions and an argument about who left the rubble.

We cover the whole sequence. Clearing, cut and pad before the pour. Service trench backfill, retaining prep and final trim during the build. Limestone driveway and crossover, spoil removal and clean-up at the end, so the block is ready for landscaping and handover.