How we work.

Design, documentation and site supervision. Five stages, defined in writing.

Design Consultants & Client Representatives · Dubai

Design is not one service. An appointment with True Build runs through five defined stages, and includes exactly the stages your agreement lists. You know what each stage includes, what it costs, and what you hold when it closes. Most disputes in this industry trace to a single cause: different assumptions about what was included. We remove the assumptions.

The appointment is staged for a reason. You can stop at the end of any completed stage with everything you have paid for in your hands. Clients rarely do. But a studio should be easy to leave, and worth staying with.

Bushra Khokhar and Tariq Ismail working through a design over the studio sketchbook and laptop
Working the brief · The studio · 2026
STAGE 01

Concept Design

The direction is set. Layouts, spatial planning, the material and lighting direction, and the character of every space, tested against how you actually live in it.

What you hold at the close

A concept package to react to, and a budget band to plan around.

STAGE 02

Detailed Design

The concept becomes drawings a contractor can price without guessing. Plans, elevations, details, schedules and specifications, coordinated into one documentation set.

What you hold at the close

A tender-ready set. Every contractor prices the same information, so quotations can finally be compared honestly.

STAGE 03

Procurement Coordination

Sourcing, quotations and comparisons, organised room by room and released in planned stages. Funds precede orders, and your approval precedes every purchase.

What you hold at the close

A procurement plan in which nothing is ordered that you have not seen, priced and approved.

STAGE 04

Site Coordination

Design quality is not protected from an office desk. We are present on site, review the work for design compliance, and record every variation with its cost and programme impact before it is approved.

What you hold at the close

A written record of every decision, made while changes were still cheap.

STAGE 05

Styling & Handover

The finishing layer. Styling, snagging against the documentation rather than against memory, and a defects liability period with terms agreed in writing.

What you hold at the close

A finished home, and the paper trail behind it.

Where our responsibility begins, and ends.

The clearest thing we can tell you is what we are not. True Build is your design consultant and your representative. We are not your contractor, and we will not blur the two: every engagement states in writing who contracts whom, who pays whom, and who carries what.

Bushra Khokhar and Tariq Ismail reviewing project records together, schedules and drawings laid out on the desk
Reviewing the record · The studio · 2026

We do

  • Lead the design, and coordinate every design decision
  • Review the work on site for design compliance
  • Represent your interest in every room we enter
  • Challenge contractors, and protect the budget
  • Explain trade-offs before they become expensive

We do not

  • Take the contractor's liability for workmanship, delays or site safety
  • Guarantee another company's programme
  • Carry hidden margins anywhere in your budget
  • Use the word turnkey

Responsibility is documented before problems arise, not after.

How we charge.

One professional fee covers design, documentation and site supervision. It is set to the scale of the work, agreed before anything begins, and it exists to protect every other line in your budget.

It is unrelated to contractor profit, furniture purchases or material costs. Our only commercial interest in your project is the fee you pay us, which is what allows us to challenge every other number on your behalf.

See how we charge in detail

Begin with the consultation.

Forty-five minutes with a principal, a written brief, and a realistic sense of cost. The first stage of the appointment, in miniature.