We take work three ways. We design a scheme and someone else builds it. We build to a design someone else has drawn. Or we do both. They are genuinely different appointments, and the difference is mostly about where the risk sits.

Design only. You get drawings, approvals and a scheme that can be priced and tendered. You keep control of who builds it and what it costs, and you get competitive tension on the construction price. What you also keep is the gap: the moment the drawings leave our hands, the person interpreting them is not the person who drew them. Good documentation narrows that gap. Nothing closes it.

Build only. You come with a design already done, often by an architect you have a relationship with, and you want it built properly. This is a clean appointment. The scheme is fixed, our job is to deliver it, and the questions are about programme, workmanship and cost control rather than about what the house should be. We do a lot of this and we are comfortable saying that the design credit belongs elsewhere.

Both. One team from sketch to handover. No handover gap, no gap to argue about when something on site does not match something on paper, and one number to hold. The trade-off is that you are not testing the construction price against the open market, so you are relying on the relationship being honest. That is a fair thing to want proof of before committing.

There is no right answer among the three. There is a wrong one, which is not deciding, then discovering halfway through that everyone assumed a different arrangement. Ask early who is responsible for the drawings, who is responsible for what gets built, and what happens when those two things disagree. Any studio worth appointing will have a clear answer.