About Price Doctor and How it Came About

Price Doctor was born out of an idea by the DIY Doctor himself, Mike Edwards.

With the rapid growth of the web and the overwhelming success of the DIY Doctor website, Mike had always wanted to provide some solution for simplifying the estimating and quoting process that builders have to go through that has always been a lengthy process for builders with no guarantee that they would actually win the job that they were quoting for.

A typical detailed quote for a fairly large job such as an extension can sometimes take several days to put together as the plans need to be looked over in detail.

From this, a materials list is then put together and then prices need to be gathered to compile a total price. In some cases this can be fairly straight foward, but if specialist materials are needed this can take some time and effort to source.

Additionally, if structural members such as steels are also required then a structural engineer is required to calculate the size and type of steels needed, all adding time and expense to the process.

Mikes idea was to produce an online application that would allow builders to speed up the above process, allowing them to produce quick and accurate quotes without the additional requirement of either learning how to use the complex software-based solutions that existed at the time to get an accurate price or using one of the many simpler calculators that just worked off of a basic price per square metre/foot.

With the concept and framework of the idea firmly established, the next job was to find someone to build it. After some though and initial research this was starting to seem like an impossible task.

Essentially what was needed was for a Mike to sit down with a web programmer and spend what would be somewhere in the region of about 6 months imparting all of his knowledge on to him or her.

Due to the time and expense of this, it was quickly decided that this was a no-go option, so back to the drawing board! After some more though it was decided that we would need to find a quantity surveyor that would not only have all of the necessary construction and costing knowledge but who was also familiar with programming web-based applications.

Suddenly, the idea of Mike sitting with a programmer wasn’t seeming like such a bad idea as trying to find an individual with that skillset was surely an impossibility! The Price Doctor concept was suddenly starting to look like it would never get off the ground.

If you have ever visited the DIY Doctor website you will know that all the information is free to all and to pay for the costs of running the site we display adverts from both large and small companies related to DIY and construction.

In a total quirk of fate, one morning Mike was looking through the latest batch of advertising requests from companies and individuals wishing to appear on the site and one caught his eye.

It was from a smart young, enterprising chap by the name of Alex Greene who was looking to start marketing his online pricing applications.

Mike got on the phone to Alex right away and after a lengthy chat about his idea and what he wanted to achieve, Alex seemed confident that he could produce an application that would satisfy the Price Doctor brief. Also, in an even freakier quirk of fate, it turned out that Alex was indeed a quantity surveyor and had just got into programming web applications – what were the chances of that!!

After many meetings and hours programming, designing and testing the framework for Price Doctor was ready and working well. Mike pushed it out to his many friends and contacts that worked in the industry and all agreed as a tool, the pricing was pretty much spot on.

As an independent company, DIY Doctor has always taken a strong stance against the cowboys that blight the construction industry and by this we don’t just mean cowboy builders, cowboy customers as just as rife.

As an application, Price Doctor provides not only a great solution for builders to produce estimates and quotes but also for their customers to check and validate those quotes to ensure they are accurate. Through this process, everything is totally transparent and a trust-based relationship between both parties can be firmly established which should go a long way in ensuring that everyone gets what they want – The builder gets paid a decent wage for his work and the home owner gets a great job for their money!

As an application, Price Doctor has come a long way since the early days. We are constantly working on updating and improving the system with the ultimate goal of providing the best and most trusted quoting and pricing platform on the web for both builders and home owners alike.

With Alex beavering away busily in the code-base adding features and improvements and the DIY Doctor team constantly testing, you can be sure that Price Doctor will remain a strong, dependable choice when it comes to choosing a pricing application.

The ultimate goal of Price Doctor is to become a safe place for home owners and builders alike and allow both parties to engage with each other, create designs which are fit for purpose, check and produce quotes, and manage all the necessary communication involved in starting and completing a wide variety of building projects. Ensuring that the whole process is transparent from start to finish, both parties will get a great outcome for the right price.

If you would like to give Price Doctor a go, why not try our our demo? Click here to register and get started.

Likewise, if you have used Price Doctor before and would like to suggest a feature, get in touch with us here.