New-Build Housing Brickwork

Brickwork for housebuilders, plot by plot

New-build housing is most of what we do, and most of what you'll see in our photos. The work is subcontract brickwork and blockwork on housing developments: bungalows with garages, two-storey detached and semi-detached homes, and three-storey townhouses with dormers. We work to the architect's drawings, the housebuilder's specification and the site programme, and we work off the scaffold as the lifts go up.

Kris Williams runs the company and holds the NOCN Level 3 NVQ Diploma in Trowel Occupations (Construction), awarded in June 2026. The units behind it cover setting out, erecting masonry structures and cladding, repairs, and architectural and decorative features. That's the day-to-day work of a housing site, assessed in the workplace. You can see the full list of units on our Qualifications page.

What a typical plot involves

On a standard cavity-wall house we pick up from the slab or beam-and-block floor at DPC. We set out from the drawings, build the facing brick outer leaf and the blockwork inner leaf together, and fit the wall ties, cavity trays, insulation and closers to the specification as the walls rise. Openings are formed to the window and door schedule, lintels are bedded, and we build in meter boxes, air bricks and weep vents where they're shown.

Most of the house types in our photos carry a buff stone band course and stone heads and sills. Getting the band level and continuous around the building, with the brick coursing working to it, is one of the details that decides whether a finished street looks right. The same goes for gables, chimneys and dormer cheeks on the upper lifts.

Keeping a phase consistent

On a phased development the same brick has to look the same on plot 1 and plot 40. We draw from several packs at once so any colour variation is spread through the wall rather than showing as bands. The Brick Development Association's guidance recommends mixing from at least three packs, and the NHBC Standards expect bricks from different batches to be mixed unless the manufacturer has already blended them. We keep joints, gauge and pointing profile consistent from plot to plot, and we tell the site manager early if a new delivery looks different from what's already built.

Working with your site team

We fit around the rest of the programme: groundworkers ahead of us, scaffolders between lifts, joiners and roofers behind. We keep our work area tidy and our materials where the site manager wants them, and we let you know in good time if something will hold us up, such as missing lintels, a drawing query or a scaffold that isn't ready.

Safe, tidy working

Housing sites are busy, and a tidy brickwork gang makes everyone's day easier. We follow the site induction and rules, keep scaffold lifts clear of loose bricks and offcuts, stack materials within the scaffold's loading limits, and clear up brick cuts, bands and packaging as we go. When a plot is finished, the site manager should be able to hand it straight to the next trade without a clean-up first.