1st fix carpentry
Joists, structural floors, stud partitions, roof structure, door linings, noggins and the timber that disappears behind plasterboard. Gets a building from shell to plasterable.
Commercial carpentry
Commercial carpentry contractors
Commercial carpentry packages for main contractors and developers across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk. Send the drawings and the specification and you get a priced package with the scope written out, not a day rate.
What you are buying
A subcontractor that holds the programme.
Carpentry is the trade most likely to drag a programme, because it sits on the critical path three separate times: once at joists and roof, once at first fix, and once at second fix and doors. AJB Group is set up to remove that risk by employing carpenters rather than hiring them job by job, so a site is not competing with three other sites for the same gang.
The company is a Spalding-based carpentry contractor with fourteen full-time carpenters split into external and internal teams, backed by a vetted network of self-employed site carpenters for peaks. It is CHAS accredited and SMSTS certified, retains an external health and safety consultant, and issues project-specific RAMS before mobilisation. There is a company crane for joist, truss and frontage lifts, which takes a hire dependency out of your programme.
Management competence here is documented rather than asserted. Director Ashley Box holds a Level 6 NVQ Diploma in Construction Site Management (Building and Civil Engineering), awarded on 20 July 2026 by Highfield Qualifications and assessed across 22 workplace units on evidence from projects that were actually run. The units are the ones a buyer would want assessed in a package subcontractor: controlling project progress against agreed programmes, controlling project progress against agreed quality standards, controlling project quantities and costs, managing temporary works, establishing dimensional control criteria, organising and monitoring supplies of materials, and managing the project handover. That is a competence qualification, not a five day course, and it is set out in full with the certificate number on the accreditations page.
Work is taken as a full carpentry package, supply and fit, or as labour only where the main contractor is buying materials directly. Both are routine. What does not happen is a package being won and then sublet to whoever is available, which is the usual reason quality drifts between plot one and plot thirty.
Below are the five work packages inside commercial carpentry. Each has its own page with sequencing, specification and the jobs behind it.
Contract terms and capability
- Pricing
- Package price from drawings and specification, or day works
- Scope
- Supply and fit, or labour only
- Labour
- 14 employed carpenters plus vetted subcontract gangs
- Plant
- Company crane for joist, truss and frontage lifts
- Compliance
- CHAS, SMSTS, project RAMS, retained H&S consultant
- Management
- Director holds a Level 6 NVQ Diploma in Construction Site Management
- Sectors
- Housing, industrial, retail, healthcare, civic, rail
- Core area
- Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk
- Travelled to
- Kent, London, Northampton, Nottingham, Leeds, Wales
The five packages
Take one, or take the lot.
Most contracts start with one package and grow. The Fleet Hargate industrial units began as 11 joist sets and became full office fit-outs on all 11 units.
Second fix carpentry
Doors and ironmongery, architrave, skirting, staircases and balustrades, panelling and the finish trades that determine whether a plot gets signed off first time.
Full carpentry packages
One appointment covering joists to handover across every plot on a development, priced as a package with a single point of responsibility for the whole carpentry scope.
Shopfitting and fit-out
Shop fronts, hoarding, drive-thru builds, retail and restaurant fit-outs, office fit-outs and industrial unit conversions. Costa, KFC, Taco Bell and Starbucks among them.
Shuttering and formwork
Shutter boxes, plinth blocks, edge formwork and pour preparation, set out with site engineers to the tolerances a concrete frame demands.
Structural carpentry
The load-bearing silo that sits alongside this one: floor joists and structural floors, posi-joist and traditional sets, timber frame erection and structural openings.
Evidence
Sectors already delivered.
Healthcare. At NHS Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, following Apex Demolition on the groundworks, AJB Group installed 450 x 450 shutter boxes ahead of 58 concrete pours. Working alongside site engineers, these had to be fitted to millimetre precision to land prefabricated ZED Pods on. The team completed phase one in May and returned for phase two, by which point a four-storey staff accommodation block was standing on the work.
Commercial to residential. At 17-19 High Street in Grantham for Probus Construction, the full carpentry package covered new external sash windows and doors, new shop front windows and hoarding, 72 internal fire doors and frames, two double winder staircases, new internal joists and flooring, stud partitions to all external walls, stud layout for nine apartments, nine kitchens and a pharmacy shop fit-out. Phase one ran six weeks on site.
Housing. A 300-home development is currently taking the full internal carpentry package plus garage roof installations, running across plots at different build stages. Long Sutton was a 69 to 70-unit estate with all exterior works. Quadring was a 9-bungalow development, roofs then first fixes, with 7 plots roofed in a day at peak.
Industrial. Fleet Hargate took the full carpentry package on 8 industrial units with a further 3 in Spalding: 11 joist sets, then full office fit-outs on all 11 units. The carpentry tender for a new Tente Castors industrial unit in Peterborough was won from Probus Construction. Midgate House in Peterborough is a 150-flat conversion of existing offices into modern living quarters.
Named main contractors and clients
- Contractors
- Probus Construction, SSL Home Creations, HB Developments, Oakwood Homes, Grocott & Murfit, Apex Demolition, J Turner Brickwork
- Industrial
- Tente Castors, M Yould & Sons, Floorspan Contracts, Eastern Construction Consultants
- Public sector
- NHS Hinchingbrooke, North Norfolk District Council, East Lindsey District Council
- Brands
- Costa, KFC, Taco Bell, Starbucks
How a package is priced
What to send, and what comes back.
Send the architectural drawings, the joist and truss design, the door and ironmongery schedule and the finishes specification. What comes back is a package price with the scope broken out by work package, so there is no argument at valuation about who owned the stud partitions or the door linings. Where a scope genuinely cannot be defined, for example remedial or survey-led work, day works are quoted instead.
Programme is agreed against your build sequence, not ours. On multi-plot sites that usually means external teams running joists and roofs ahead of the internal teams following through first fix, which is how 7 plots were roofed in a single day at Quadring and how the 300-home development runs across plots at different stages. On single-building conversions it means phasing, as at Grantham where phase one was six weeks on site.
For quantity surveyors: scope is written out line by line, variations are priced before they are carried out, and there is one contact for the whole carpentry scope rather than four subcontractors each blaming the other for the same missed date.
Homeowners: this page is written for contractors, but the same carpenters do domestic work. If you are building your own house or extension, start at extensions and renovations instead, where you get one point of contact, a free site visit and a written estimate.
Common questions
Commercial carpentry, answered
How do you price commercial carpentry work?
From drawings and specification. Send the architectural drawings, the joist and truss design and the finishes schedule and we return a package price with the scope written out line by line. Day works are available where the scope genuinely cannot be defined, for example remedial or survey-led work.
Will you take a full carpentry package or labour only?
Either. Most contracts are full package, supply and fit, from joists and roof structure through first fix, second fix, doors, staircases and kitchens. Labour-only gangs are supplied where the main contractor is buying materials directly, which is common on volume housing sites.
What accreditations do you hold for pre-qualification?
CHAS accreditation and SMSTS certification, obtained in April 2024, with a retained external health and safety consultant reviewing the company. Director Ashley Box also holds a Level 6 NVQ Diploma in Construction Site Management, awarded on 20 July 2026 and assessed across 22 workplace units. Project-specific RAMS are issued before mobilisation. These are the documents most main contractors request at pre-qualification.
How many carpenters can you put on a site?
Fourteen full-time employed carpenters, split into external and internal teams, plus a vetted network of self-employed site carpenters for peaks. On the Quadring bungalow development the team roofed 7 plots in a single day, and on a 300-home development internal carpentry runs across plots at different build stages simultaneously.
Do you work outside Lincolnshire?
Yes. The core area is Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, but commercial contracts have taken us to Northampton, Tottenham and Leeds for drive-thru and restaurant fit-outs, to Nottingham for office refits on the HS2 concrete plant, and to Kent and Wales. Accommodation is covered for working away.
Can you handle shuttering and formwork as well as joinery?
Yes. At NHS Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon we installed 450 x 450 shutter boxes to millimetre precision ahead of 58 concrete pours, working alongside site engineers, to form the base for prefabricated ZED Pod four-storey staff accommodation. See shuttering carpentry for the detail.
Send the drawings, get a package price
Architectural drawings, joist and truss design and specification is enough to price from.