No land, purely construction costs.
More render = more profit as far as our schools go, get away with as much as it as we can, think that one was probably 3/4 or more rendered and a pretty standard brick for the rest. To be fair we've got a very profitable model on the schools framework now, what we build is very basic but it meets the DfE OS and that's the name of the game unfortunately, local planners seem to push up the quality much more so than DfE or individual schools, like one we've got starting the other side of London soon is going to have to be full brickwork facades with lots of nice soldier courses and recessed panels but then we can claim extra money for that when it's enforced by planners.
The DfE framework is a bit of a joke commercially from what I know of it, nowhere near enough nuance in stipulating a project specific budget and plenty of scope for contractor's to provide very dull generic buildings. From what I've seen of other contractor's efforts they almost all provide a superior product to us, in terms of aesthetics at least, but then we'd rather win say 1 out of 3 bids with big profit in them than win 2/3 with a much tighter margin and more complex build. Hard to knock their approach at the moment as it's usually very profitable, think attitudes would change significantly if there was some sort of pain/gain profit share agreement in the framework like a lot of Universities seem to be heading towards.
