I was a bricklayer who always loved architecture—and I got to see first hand what happened to houses when architects didn’t design them. I decided that I wanted to understand how good houses were designed—and to learn how to build them really well.

Bellevarde
Principles

{First Principle}

FIND THE BEST PEOPLE

It is about searching until we find the people who share our love for building houses as well as they can be built.

That’s what Bellevarde is—a team of us who just want to build extraordinary houses. It is an attitude that can’t be driven or constrained by external factors. It’s innate.

{Second principle}

KEEP ON LEARNING

Everything we have learned in building some of this country’s most complex and challenging houses is formalised in our 200 page Bellevarde Construction Manual. It details step-by-step instructions on how best to perform every critical task.

It is on every site and is constantly reviewed and updated as our knowledge grows and as building techniques, materials, equipment, and technologies, evolve.

{Third principle}

FORM A BUILDING TEAM

It takes three key players to make a great house: Owner, Architect and Builder. That is why on each site we form them into a Building Team headed by our site manager.

The trio meets regularly to review, discuss and guide every aspect of the project. This ensures everyone knows just where we are, where we are going next—and ensures that together the Team can make the best decisions.

It is the best way to deliver an extraordinary house, of good value that brings great joy to all of us.

{Fourth Principle}

MAINTAIN THE HOUSE

This came from our owners. They asked us to take care of their houses as well as we built them. So we formed our own specialised Bellevarde Maintenance division. It benefits from access to all information on the construction of the house. Plus we can often call on the very tradespeople who built it.

Each new house has its own Maintenance Manager. According to our owners and architects, we deliver the most efficient and skilled maintenance operation they have ever worked with—indeed several have asked us to take care of other properties we didn’t build.

Bellevarde
Construction Manual

What it is and why we have one?

Our great passion is to build beautiful houses extraordinarily well.

Since 1980 we’ve been building some of this country’s most complex and challenging houses. In that time we have determined what works (and what doesn’t) for just about every situation you can imagine. We have prided ourselves on keeping careful note of everything we’ve done.

The practical result of this meticulous accumulation of knowledge is in the Bellevarde Construction Manual—the over 200-page manual to be found on every Bellevarde site. It details step-by-step how every task is to be performed. No exceptions.

If our Bellevarde site managers weren’t always looking to improve on the Construction Manual, they wouldn’t be our site managers.

Yet, even they have no power to implement their own ideas until the other managers and John Fielding have assessed them as being worthwhile improvements.

This process encourages everyone to keep striving to better our standards, while guaranteeing uniformity across all our sites.

Rewards are given to everyone who contributes to the Construction Manual.

Continuing to discover even better ways to build beautiful houses, is why we come to work.