The hardest part of building from another country is not the construction. It is the not knowing. You have committed a large sum to a site you cannot stand on, and the updates arrive late, blurry, and always sounding fine.

We run it differently. Every month a client gets a dated report: photographs taken from the same vantage points so progress is easy to read, a short note on what moved and what is next, and a clear line on programme and spend. Once a month we also record a walkthrough and talk through it, so questions get answered against the actual wall, not a description of it.

None of this is complicated. It is just decided in advance and never skipped. The result is that clients abroad stop bracing for bad news and start watching their house go up, which is how it should feel.