Quadring: the leading carpentry role on a Lincolnshire housing development

The brief

One village, one carpentry contractor, two years

Quadring is a village a few miles from Spalding, and it has produced more continuous work for AJB Group than almost anywhere else in south Lincolnshire. The relationship started at the finishing end, with porches and internal joinery on properties that were already up, and grew into the leading carpentry role on a new housing development in the same village.

That progression is worth noting, because it is how carpentry contracts are actually awarded. Nobody hands a development to a firm they have never watched work. They give them five porches first.

By June 2022 the leading carpentry role on the new housing development at Quadring had been confirmed, and the site ran through to 2023 with roofs, first fix and the internal package all sitting with the same contractor.

What we did

Five hand cut hip end porches

The first job on record at Quadring, in November 2021, was the final touches to the front of a run of properties: five hand cut hip end softwood porches, built up in a week, with a clad underside.

A hip end porch roof slopes on three sides rather than two, which is what makes it look finished rather than tacked on. It is also fiddly. The hip rafters run at a compound angle, the jack rafters all differ in length, and every cut is a bevel. At that size there is no sense in trussing anything, so they are hand cut on site to the opening each one sits over. The clad underside then hides the structure and gives the front elevation a clean soffit line.

Nine bungalow roofs, in phases

In May 2022 the first phase started on nine bungalow roofs at Quadring, and by early June a selection of them were going on across the site with the first fixes due to start the following week.

Bungalow roofs are deceptively demanding on a development. The span is wide relative to the wall height, the roof is the dominant part of the elevation, and because there is only one storey below it there is very little tolerance to absorb: whatever the roof does, you can see it from the road. Phasing them, rather than trying to do all nine at once, keeps the scaffold, the roofer and the first fix teams in a rhythm.

Seven plots roofed in a single day

The high water mark came in May 2023: seven plots roofed in one day, with the carpenters flying in the sunshine.

Seven plots in a day is not one team working faster. It is several teams working simultaneously on a site where the setting out, the deliveries and the craneage have all been organised well enough in advance for it to be possible. It is the clearest single illustration of what employed carpenters give a developer over a gang hired job by job, because it means the roofs are not the reason a plot slips.

Inside the houses: first fix to finish

The internal package ran alongside. In December 2021 the final works were completed on a five bed property at Quadring just in time for Christmas: oak doors, a softwood staircase and a huge open plan kitchen diner. Two days later, the last job of that year was a two tone kitchen in the same village.

Then the first fixes followed the roofs across the new development from June 2022. Holding both ends of the job matters more than it sounds: the carpenter who cut the roof knows exactly where the trimmers and the structure sit when it comes to hanging the doors and setting the staircase, so nothing has to be discovered twice.

Gangs for site projects

Quadring is also the project AJB Group has used to make the offer plainly to other developers: if you are looking for carpentry gangs to take on your site projects, this is what that looks like in practice. Nine roofs in phases, seven plots in a day, and the internal package behind them.