Date of experience: July 29, 2021

What to say, we enquired for recommendations of a local Facebook page and Kevin’s team were the first ones recommended.

What to say, we enquired for recommendations of a local Facebook page and Kevin’s team were the first ones recommended.

Of the four firms we contacted, Kevin was the first to come to price the job. He was keen to understand what we were trying to achieve with our driveway design, made some significant suggestions on ways to optimise the space – this is before he has even been awarded the work he was sharing the depth of his experience and making planning and design ideas that he may not even benefit from. So I guess there is my first point - Kevin actually cares about what you are trying to do with your landscape design or driveway and will contribute ideas where he sees a way to improve the end result.

Previous works and references are available.

Cost – reasonable costing well within rational expectations, even when we expanded the scope by around 50% the rates were very reasonable for the quality of the result.

Day to day on site - Kevin’s crew of guys are professionals, they don’t wear suits to work but they are definitely professional they know what they are doing, that 80% of the job is in the preparation and that the finish is key. They tidy up every day they leave the site, in as tidy a state as they can during the works, they are as quiet as can be expected by tasks that require stihl saws and excavators and after the works were completed we did speak with our neighbours and they were all entirely satisfied by the way the job had been managed to considerately accommodate the goings on around the street.

Change - how a company deals with a concern or change tells you more about them than anything else, at about 90% complete on the job a minor issue with the level of a few pieces of kerbing and how they would affect my neighbour came to my attention > Don’t get me wrong, they had been installed absolutely correctly - I had failed to let the guys know exactly what I required with regard to level at the bottom of the drive where it joins my neighbours. When I drew their attention to this issue, it was handled as if it was of absolutely no concern whatsoever – the guys simply dealt with the change even though it meant lifting and relaying some of the kerbing – no hassle, no issues.

The extra mile – Part of our design was a small curved retaining wall to provide some kerb appeal to the edge of the drive and to conceal the excavated section of the lawn. Expectation was a small wall with a matching type of block and some coping, Kevin sourced a matching stonework dry build self-draining material with a matching coping stone that perfectly matches the drive way block colouring, a really nice touch that everyone who has commented on our drive has mentioned.

Additional work – I guess the ultimate measure in someone’s satisfaction level with the work provided is getting additional work out of the job, we have plans for our garden for next spring and I can’t see any reason we wouldn’t re-engage Allison’s Paving and Landscapes for the works.