Bricklayers in the West Midlands

Brickwork contracts across the West Midlands

The West Midlands metropolitan county takes in Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Sandwell and Solihull. It's one of the busiest construction markets in the UK outside London, with a steady flow of housing, apartment, regeneration, commercial, industrial and public-sector schemes.

We're based in Welshpool, around 50 miles from the western edge of the conurbation and further from Birmingham and Coventry. So we focus on work that suits a contractor travelling in: larger developments and contract packages where the brickwork is substantial and programmed, not one-off domestic jobs. Wolverhampton and Walsall, on the western side, are the nearest parts of the region to us.

For West Midlands clients we offer large-scale projects, new-build housing phases, apartment and flat brickwork, commercial and industrial packages, and retaining walls built to an engineer's design as part of a wider package.

What we bring to a West Midlands package

Our photographed work covers new-build housing (bungalows, two-storey homes and three-storey townhouses in facing brick with stone banding and blockwork inner leaves) and public-sector buildings with brick cladding and engineering-brick plinths built off scaffold. That public-sector work includes new school buildings, Ministry of Defence projects and hospital buildings, the kind of work that makes up a large share of the region's pipeline.

Kris runs the work directly and holds the NOCN Level 3 NVQ Diploma in Trowel Occupations (Construction), regulated by Ofqual. For a main contractor, that means the person pricing the package is the person responsible for delivering it, with one point of contact from quote to handover.

Regulations and the higher-risk regime

The West Midlands is in England, so building work follows the Building Regulations for England and the UK Government's Approved Documents. That's different from our home county of Powys, where the Welsh guidance applies. England's current Approved Document L for dwellings (2021 edition) came into force on 15 June 2022.

Taller residential schemes are more common in the West Midlands than in our home area. Under the Building Safety Act 2022, buildings at least 18 metres high or with at least seven storeys, and at least two residential units, are "higher-risk buildings". Their design and construction go through the Building Safety Regulator, with stricter controls on changes and record-keeping. On any job, we build to the approved drawings and specification and don't make changes without the designer's agreement, which matters all the more on those schemes.

Planning at distance

Working away from base means the programme has to be agreed up front: the sequence of plots or elevations, scaffold dates, deliveries and storage. We set that out with the site manager before starting and keep them updated as the job progresses. Anything that could affect the programme, from materials to weather, gets raised early.

Next step

Send Kris the drawings, the brick and block specification and your programme. We'll tell you honestly whether we can resource the package and when we could start.

Keeping quality consistent on big schemes

On multi-plot or multi-block schemes the finish depends on consistency. We blend bricks from several packs so there's no colour banding between plots, keep gauge, joint thickness and pointing the same from the first lift to the last, and set out each building from the drawings rather than copying the one next door. Stone bands, plinths and contrasting brick panels have to line through on every elevation.