the most expensive sentence in cypriot construction: "we'll sort it out at the end"

I've heard it on more sites than I can count. Usually it's said kindly, with a shrug, standing on a half-poured slab in the afternoon heat. The owner wants to move a doorway. The contractor says of course, no problem, we'll sort it out at the end.

Nobody is lying. The contractor genuinely intends to be reasonable. The owner genuinely believes a doorway is a small thing. And eight months later they are sitting across a table, and the doorway costs €4,000, and neither of them can prove what was agreed.

The problem isn't the change. It's the timing of the price.

Price a variation before the work is done, and you're two parties negotiating with the freedom to say no. Price it after the work is done, and one party has all the leverage. "We'll sort it out at the end" is a decision to hand away your negotiating position, made cheerfully, months before you find out what it cost you.

Why overseas owners get hit hardest

If you live in Limassol and drive past the site twice a week, you notice the doorway while it's still a pencil line. If you live in London, you find out in an invoice. I work almost exclusively with owners who aren't on the island, and this is the pattern I see most: fifteen small verbal agreements, none written down, arriving together as a final account that's twenty percent over the contract sum.

What a variations procedure actually looks like

It takes about ten minutes per change. Before signing the contract, agree in writing that: no variation is executed without a written instruction; every variation is priced before it is built; programme impact is stated explicitly; a running register is kept. The best time to put it in place is precisely when it feels unnecessary.

The uncomfortable part

The contractor's engineer is paid by the contractor. Someone has to sit on your side of the table — someone whose only client is you. If you're building in Cyprus from abroad, that person cannot be you, and it should not be the contractor.

Michalis Savva is the founder of Maison Rêves, an independent client-side project management practice based in Limassol. The initial consultation is free.