We run renovations, restorations and new builds in Portugal on behalf of the people who own them — most of whom are somewhere else. We find and vet the builders, put the work out to real tender, hold the job to the drawings, check every invoice before you pay it, and see it through to handover. One point of contact from the first walkthrough to the keys. No commissions from anyone. You hold the contract. We answer only to you.
A project several hundred kilometres away, run by a crew you’ve only just met, in a language you don’t argue in, is exactly the situation where things quietly go wrong. Corners cut where nobody will look. Work signed off before it’s finished. Invoices for more than has actually been built. Programmes that slip a fortnight at a time until a year has gone.
Almost none of it is villainy. It’s what happens on any job where nobody independent is standing over it — and on a job where the owner is in London, Sydney or New York, nobody is. That’s the gap we fill. We’re the person on site who is answerable to you and to nobody else.
The short version: you buy a building. We take it from there and hand it back finished, licensed and built properly — without you having to fly in to find out whether that’s true.
We’re a licensed Portuguese construction company — IMPIC Alvará n.º 109726-PAR — which you can verify on the public register. We work the length of the country, from the Algarve to the far north.
Structured so you can commission only what you need, when you need it. Most clients start at the beginning and keep going.
Before anything else, we tell you the truth about what you're taking on — an existing building, or a site and a set of drawings. A full day or more on site, reading it floor by floor the way the person who has to fix it reads it — with thermal imaging and moisture metering so you’re not relying on what the surface happens to show. Then a written report you can put in front of a bank, a partner or an investor group: what you’re taking on, what condition it’s genuinely in, what the works will realistically cost, and the licensing realities that shape the whole scheme.
Inspections & surveys →Then we find out who should build it and what it should really cost. We scope the works properly, pin down the finishes and specification — the part almost nobody does, and the reason three quotes are never comparable — and build a tender package every builder prices against. We source credible regional contractors and check them: licence, insurance, financial standing, references, and our own eyes on a building they’ve finished. Then we level the quotes onto one sheet, flag the gaps and the thin lines, and tell you plainly who to use and why.
And then we manage the job. Contract set up in your name. Trades coordinated and kept out of each other’s way. Quality hold-points inspected and signed off — pre-slab, pre-close, first fix, pre-plaster, second fix, completion — before the next stage starts and before any payment goes out. Materials and labour benchmarked as they’re ordered so you’re not overpaying as you go. Then snagging, commissioning, and the building made ready for its licença de utilização.
It happens more often than anyone in this trade admits. The contractor goes quiet, then stops answering the phone, and you are left standing in a half-built house with a folder of invoices and no clear idea what you have actually paid for. We have been brought in on several projects where the original contractor stopped work. The first job is always the same one: establish where the thing genuinely stands.
That starts with a full assessment on site — what is built, what is built wrong, what has been certified and what has not. Then the paper: contract, invoices, payments made against work actually done, whether the licence is still live and who is named as diretor de obra. You get a written position covering what is owed, what is salvageable and what it costs to finish. From there we either tender the remaining works to vetted contractors and run it for you, or our own teams complete it. Same rules as everything else on this page. No commissions, and you hold the contract.
The legal side belongs to your lawyer. If there is money in dispute or a contract to enforce, that is their work and not ours. What we hand them is the technical position — measured, photographed and written down — so they are arguing from evidence instead of your recollection of what was supposed to happen.
Nothing about this is unusual enough to be embarrassed by, and there is no benefit in waiting. A stopped job keeps costing money while it sits — exposed work takes weather, scaffold hire runs on, and licences have dates on them. What to do in the first week →
The single most common way an overseas owner loses money on a Portuguese build isn’t fraud. It’s paying for work that hasn’t been done yet, on a schedule somebody else wrote, with nobody checking.
So we check contractor valuations and invoices before you release a cent, tie every payment to a stage that has actually been inspected and signed off, and set the payment schedule up that way from the contract onwards. If it isn’t built, it isn’t paid.
We see what’s about to be hidden. The same thermal and moisture kit we inspect with gets used during the build, on work that’s about to disappear behind plaster and finishes. That’s the moment problems become cheap or expensive forever.
Written reporting, wherever you are. Regular progress reports with photographs, in plain English, so you always know exactly where your project stands without getting on a plane.
You’ll get a proposal with the construction budget and our fee set out on different lines, so you can see exactly what our service costs and what it doesn’t. The shape is always the same.
Our fee is fixed when the building contract is signed. It doesn’t go up if the builder’s costs do, so we’ve no interest in the number rising and every interest in holding it.
01 · Inspect & cost plan. A fixed fee for the building, agreed before we travel. Covers the day on site, the diagnostic kit, the condition report, the cost plan and the licensing notes. If you go on to the next stage, part of it comes off.
02 · Vet the builders & tender. A fixed fee for the tender package, the sourcing and checking of contractors, the levelled comparison and the recommendation.
03 · Run it to the finish. A percentage of the construction value, banded by how much of us is on the ground: the lower end for a job we run from Porto with scheduled site visits, the upper end for a job that needs us there every week. Billed monthly, in advance, for the month ahead.
Already paid for a Property Advisory? Part of that fee comes off stage one. Tell us about the project and you’ll have the numbers before you commit to anything.
No agent commissions. No contractor referral fees. No supplier margins quietly added to what you’re buying. You are the only party paying us, and we have no stake in the builder and no reason to wave anything through.
That’s not a marketing line, it’s the entire product. The moment we’re earning from the people we’re supposed to be checking, you’re paying for advice that isn’t worth having.
Prefer us to build it ourselves? We do that too — but as a separate service, on our own contract, with our own teams. See Construction by Antipodean. What we won’t do is manage a tender and quietly award it to ourselves.
Over years of projects up and down the country we’ve built a trusted network of architects, engineers, licensed trades and specialist consultants. When a job genuinely needs one, we bring them in — rather than leaving you to find them in a language you don’t speak.
Bradley has twenty-five years in construction and project management across Australia, the UK and Portugal, and started on the tools in Sydney in 2001. Mafalda is Portuguese, Central Saint Martins-trained, and runs site management and design.
That matters for one reason: a contractor can’t tell us a story. We know what the work takes, what it costs and how long it should be on site, because we’ve done it. When we say a valuation is overstated or a programme is fantasy, it’s not an opinion formed from a spreadsheet.
More about us → · Case studies: before they bought a 25-room manor house → · the stone house that was half built when we arrived →
Reports and updates in English, Portuguese, French, German and Spanish — and every conversation with your trades, suppliers and Câmara handled in Portuguese so nothing is lost in the middle.
★★★★★ 5.0 on Google · IMPIC-licensed · Working the length of Portugal.
That’s most of what we do. You get written progress reporting wherever you are, and someone on the ground who’s answerable to you and to nobody else.
No. No agent commissions, no contractor referral fees, no supplier margins. You’re the only party paying us, which is what makes the advice worth having.
You do. The contract sits between you and the builder. We run the process on your behalf as your project manager and client’s representative.
We work across Portugal, from the Algarve to the far north and the interior. Wherever the property sits, we have people we can call on.
No. It’s deliberately structured so you can commission only what you need, when you need it. Plenty of clients start with the inspection and cost plan and go on from there.
We pick jobs up mid-flight regularly, including ones where the contractor has gone quiet or left site. We’ll tell you honestly where it stands, what’s been paid for versus what’s been built, and what it’ll take to get it finished. See Build Rescue above.
No, and be wary of anyone who says they can. Recovering money is a legal matter and it belongs with a Portuguese lawyer. What we do is give that lawyer something to work with — an independent, measured record of what was built, what it was worth and what was paid for it. Technical evidence is usually the thing missing from these cases.
Three pieces, priced separately: a fixed fee for the inspection and cost plan, a fixed fee for the tender, and a percentage of the construction value for running the job, banded by how much of us is on the ground. The percentage is fixed when the building contract is signed and does not rise if the builder’s costs do. You get the construction budget and our fee on separate lines before you commit to anything.
Allow three months minimum between the first conversation and work starting. Six is more comfortable. Most of that is quoting and queueing rather than us being busy. Tendering a job properly means measuring it, pricing it and waiting on subcontractor numbers, and the trades worth having are committed well in advance. If you are working to a fixed date, give us the date first and we will tell you straight whether it stacks up.
Wherever you are and wherever it is. WhatsApp is the fastest way to reach us — we respond the same day.
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