Meet Harj Tiwana

Every Design Homes project is run by Harj personally. That is the operating model rather than a marketing position, and it sets a deliberate limit on how many jobs we take on at once.

In a volume operation, a supervisor typically runs many sites simultaneously. That works when everything is standard and it is tested the moment something is not. On a sloping block, a character renovation, or a hundred-year-old house where nothing is square, the decisions have to be made by someone who was there that morning and who has done the work himself.

It also means problems reach you when they appear rather than when they have become expensive. That is the single most common complaint owners have about building, and it is a structural problem rather than a personality one.

Coming from the tools changes how a job gets priced. Someone who has framed a house knows which details genuinely matter and which ones are being sold to you, and knows what a difficult site actually costs to build on rather than guessing at it.

It is also why we complete the site investigation before quoting. A soil test, a contour survey and the council property report establish the footing system, the overlays and the access constraints before a number is issued.

That makes our first estimate slower to produce and occasionally higher than a competitor's opening figure. It also makes it far more likely to be the number you actually pay.

Harj's experience includes the successful delivery of new build homes in New Zealand, and award-winning recognition for excellence in construction.

New Zealand residential construction operates under its own regulatory framework and, in much of the country, a harder climate than South East Queensland's. Building to that standard produces habits — around weathertightness, detailing at junctions, and finishing properly rather than adequately — that transfer directly.

Those habits are visible in the parts of a house nobody photographs: how the flashings are detailed, how the frame is braced, how the junction between new and old is resolved on an extension.

Straight answers, including the ones that cost us work. If a volume builder suits your block and brief better, we will say so. If renovating is a better project than rebuilding, we will say that too. If a duplex site does not stack up, you will hear it before you buy rather than after.

Fixed-price contracts built on complete working drawings, engineering and a documented selections schedule, so provisional sums stay few and specific.

One point of contact from the first site visit to handover, and availability afterwards. Most of our work comes from referral, which only happens if the last client would take the call.