For the team at TASS, it’s all about managing the unknown for their clients. An award-winning boutique firm specialising in custom new builds and high-end renovations, TASS now includes a complete in-house architectural design and build service as part of their offerings.
Co-founder and director of the company, Ben Tass, says the aim is to deliver on what they saw as a big pain point for homeowners – coordinating the building and design parts of renovations.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in this new set up of having as many people inhouse as possible,” he explains.
“I’m referring to professions such as architects and designers, which help the clients to take full control of the process. We only added that element about three years ago and it’s been a real pivotal point for our business.”
“Clients have heard horror stories about building and a lot of renovations aren’t getting built because it’s over budget or they hit a problem too late in the piece.”
While the TASS team is Sutherlandshire based, a lot of their work is in the Eastern suburbs, inner west, and lower north shore of Sydney. Ben and his brother Aaron started the company almost 10 years ago, back in 2015. “I come from a carpentry background, and have my builder’s license, and Aaron is from a civil engineering background, so we both were from two different walks of life,” says Ben.
“We joined forces in 2015, and started out as us two. And then we’ve grown the business every year, just getting the right people. Now we’ve got inhouse estimators, interior designers, architects, and as well as inhouse carpentry teams and apprentices.”
Over the last 10 years, the brothers have been obsessed over redefining the homeowners experience, taking on a handful of projects each year within the luxury residential sector, with a growing portfolio of award-winning projects across both major renovations and custom new builds.
WHY GO INHOUSE?
Ben says they decided to incorporate architectural and design services into the business because they kept having clients come to them with architectural plans for their dream house that were financially unrealistic.
“It all stemmed from the fact that we were getting our clients too late in the piece – just for the build part. It was like the first half of their journey, before the building component, had been tainted a little bit. We thought that if we could take control earlier on in the piece we could prevent that heartbreak.”
He says most of the secret of making clients happy is understanding what they want in their build and then value engineering those plans into something achievable.
“Value engineering is a super powerful tool, and I think it’s because every client values different things,” he says. “There are no two clients that are the same. It’s a very much a collaborative effort between the client and us to try and tailor the plans to suit. And I think you need to have the structure we have, which is inhouse estimators, inhouse builders, and inhouse architects to get that process down pat and done right.”
Ben says it’s not about a problem with architects. “We love working with architects and we still do work with other architects and they’re very much a core part of our business model,” he explains.
“However, it’s upsetting when clients come to us after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and gone through a lot of stress and a lot of years getting their plans perfect. And then they come to us and a whole bunch of other builders and discover that they can’t build it for what they thought that they could. And they’ve wasted all that time and energy and money. It’s just disheartening for them.”
EDUCATING CLIENTS
“We felt that if we could educate our clients earlier on in the piece, the final outcome would be a lot better. If you get the clients at the design phase, educating them, telling them how much it will cost throughout the different phases, telling them that, if you do it this
way, it will cost this, if we add that, it will be this price.”
Examples of TASS’s work in Vaucluse
“With knowledge comes power and they can make those decisions. It’s about knowing how much things are costing and then they can get almost a firmed-up price before it even goes to DA. We spend a lot of time on our preconstruction phase with our clients. That can be hundreds, if not thousands of hours of speaking with clients, creating a big scope of works document, which can be up to 50 pages, which highlights absolutely everything. It’s making sure that clients understand and know exactly what they’re going to get. That knowledge and that power makes sure that we don’t put our clients in a position in which they can’t afford the build.”
THE POWER OF AWARDS
TASS has won a variety of industry awards, particularly in recent years, including the HIA NSW Professional Builder / Renovator of the Year and Emerging Builder in 2024. Ben says the awards have not only been a great acknowledgement of the team’s work; it has also brought them business.
“We won a few awards in 2023, and didn’t hear anything. And then a year later, a lot of people came through and said that they had seen us via the HIA awards. It’s very much transformed not only the amount of leads we get, but also the quality of the leads.I feel that while obviously budget plays a part, anyone who wants to make sure that their project is award winning, or at least of an award-winning quality standard is the right sort of client. Our structure isn’t about price. It’s more about the quality of the project. So when someone comes via Facebook, for example, and they’ve never heard of us and they’ve just clicked on an ad, they are a very different client to someone that’s gone and actively looked at the HIA awards. The awards have definitely been transformational.”
