Sutton Coldfield Luxury Development: Turnkey Demolition & Foundations
A comprehensive site enablement and residential groundworks package for a luxury 6-bedroom property in Sutton Coldfield. Tilsley Groundworks provided a turnkey solution for the developer, managing everything from the internal strip-out and demolition to bulk excavation, muck-away, and pumped concrete foundations using our fully owned fleet.
A comprehensive site enablement and residential groundworks package for a luxury 6-bedroom property in Sutton Coldfield. Tilsley Groundworks provided a turnkey solution for the developer, managing everything from the internal strip-out and demolition to bulk excavation, muck-away, and pumped concrete foundations using our fully owned fleet.
In the high-value residential sector, speed to market is everything for a property developer.
Executive Summary
When a developer acquired a highly desirable plot in Sutton Coldfield in 2024, the site was encumbered by an existing property that needed to be entirely cleared to make way for a substantial 6-bedroom luxury dwelling. Typically, a developer would need to procure a demolition contractor to tear down the building, a haulage firm to remove the waste, an engineering firm to set out the new footprint, and finally, a groundworks contractor to dig and pour the foundations. This fragmented approach introduces massive risk: if the demolition contractor runs late, the groundworkers are delayed, and the entire critical path of the project breaks down. Tilsley Groundworks was appointed to eliminate this risk. By offering a true "end-to-end" site enablement package—supplying all our own plant, labor, and transport—we provided the developer with a single point of commercial responsibility and guaranteed the schedule from day one.
For a Commercial Director or a Quantity Surveyor, the greatest value a contractor can offer is absolute certainty.
The tilsley Solution
Our solution for this Sutton Coldfield project was rooted in our core philosophy: "If you own the kit, you own the schedule."
Because we do not rely on local plant hire shops or third-party haulage companies, we were able to tightly sequence the demolition and groundworks phases without any "standing time." We deployed our Stage V compliant Volvo excavators and our own transport network to handle the immediate transition from tearing down the old structure to digging the new footprint. By managing the internal strip-out, the heavy demolition, the site leveling, and the complex concrete pumping in-house, we gave the developer total cost transparency and operational peace of mind.
The technical execution of this project was divided into two distinct, rapidly sequenced phases.
Technical Implementation
Phase 1: Demolition & Site ClearanceBefore the heavy machinery tracked onto the site, our directly employed teams conducted a meticulous internal soft strip of the existing property, removing all non-load-bearing materials, fixtures, and segregated waste. Once the structure was stripped back to its shell, our 360-excavator operators carried out a controlled structural demolition. A significant logistical challenge on luxury residential sites is waste management. Utilizing our own fleet of grab lorries and tippers, we executed a rapid "muck-away" and cart-away strategy, ensuring that all demolition arisings were efficiently cleared from the site and diverted to licensed recycling transfer stations, keeping the site footprint completely clear for the next phase.
Phase 2: Earthworks & Foundation Engineering
With the site cleared, our civil engineering team utilized 3D GPS and laser-guided equipment to level the site, creating a pristine, build-ready plateau. Using Trimble technology, we meticulously marked out the foundations for a complex, 6-bedroom property, ensuring that the trench widths and lines were cut with +/- 20mm precision.
The foundation trenching itself required our experienced operators to cut through the varying soil conditions of Sutton Coldfield, removing hundreds of tonnes of excess spoil using our own haulage fleet. Finally, we deployed specialist concrete pumping equipment to supply and lay the foundations. By using a concrete pump rather than tracking dumpers repeatedly across the newly leveled site, we were able to deliver the high-strength concrete mix directly into the trenches safely and without disrupting the ground conditions, achieving a perfectly level, "Zero-Snag" finish.
The handover of this Sutton Coldfield project set a benchmark for residential groundworks execution.
The Results
The developer was presented with an immaculately leveled, perfectly set-out site, with fully cured, high-tolerance foundations ready for the immediate commencement of bricklaying and steel erection. By choosing Tilsley Groundworks to manage the entire package—from the first swing of the demolition shear to the final cubic meter of pumped concrete—the developer mitigated all the logistical, financial, and scheduling risks typically associated with coordinating multiple sub-contractors. We proved that a true Tier 1-capable groundworks contractor can deliver major commercial efficiency even on bespoke residential builds.
