Choosing a builder is the highest stakes decision in the whole project, and most people make it on the two worst signals available: the price and how much they liked the person.
Here is a better order.
One. Check the licence. Confirm the QBCC licence is current, is the right class for the work, and is held by the company named on the contract, not by a related entity. Ours is QBCC 1233611. This takes two minutes and rules out a whole category of problem.
Two. Ask how many jobs they are running at once. This is the single most predictive question nobody asks. A builder running more sites than they have supervision for will give you slower responses, shared trades, and a job that pauses whenever another site has a crisis. Ask who will actually be on your site and how often.
Three. Ask for the allowance schedule. Ask what percentage of the contract value sits in allowances, provisional sums and prime cost items. A high number means the price can move a long way after you sign.
Four. Test the communication before you sign. How quickly do they respond now, while they are still trying to win the job. That is the best it will ever be. Ask a question with an uncomfortable answer and watch what comes back.
Five. Ask for a referee whose job went wrong. Every builder with real history has one. A builder who claims otherwise is either new or not being straight with you. What you want to know is what happened next: who paid, how fast it was fixed, and whether the client would use them again.
Six. Ask what happens when the person running your job is away. If the honest answer is that things stop, the business runs on one person’s memory. If there is a system, a schedule and a second point of contact, that is a different kind of business.
Seven. Look at completed work in your area, not a gallery. Ask to see a renovation of similar scope in the Redlands or nearby. Photos are selected. A finished house you can stand in is not.
What awards actually tell you
Awards are worth something when they are judged on built work rather than submitted marketing. Our 2025 Master Builders Brisbane Region Award for Best Renovation and Remodelling Project in the $300,000 to $450,000 category was judged on a completed project by people who inspected it.
It does not guarantee your job will go perfectly. Nothing does. It does mean an independent body looked at our work against our peers and rated it.
The thing that matters most
You are not choosing a price. You are choosing who you will be dealing with for the next several months while your house is in pieces. Weight the decision accordingly.
