Fixed Price From a Photo: How It Works for Lots

You have a car park with a few defects, a trip-hazard you want gone before someone falls, and no spare half-day to host a site visit, walk a contractor round, then wait a week for a quote that arrives marked "provisional". The defect stays open the whole time. For a manager juggling a portfolio, the site-visit ritual is the bottleneck, not the repair.

We quote car parks from photos. You send images, we send a fixed price within 24 hours, and the job is booked within 48. No half-day hosting a walk-around. The hazard moves from "noted" to "scheduled" in a day. Here is how it works for a multi-zone commercial lot, and where the honest limits are.

Why this is a safety win, not just a convenience

The faster a known defect goes from spotted to scheduled, the shorter your window of exposure. As the PCBU under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, the clock on a known hazard starts the moment you know about it. A quoting process that takes a week to even produce a number keeps that hazard open for no good reason. Photo to fixed quote in 24 hours closes the gap between knowing and acting, which is the gap that matters for your duty of care.

The photos a multi-zone lot needs

Good photos make a tight quote. For a car park with several defect areas, send four kinds of shot for each zone:

• Wide. A full view of the zone showing the defect in context, with the surroundings, so we can see access, layout and how the area is used.

• Defect close-up. A clear shot of the actual damage: the pothole, the cracking pattern, the lifted edge, the failed patch.

• Scale. Put something of known size next to the defect. A standard shoe, a drink bottle or a tape measure works. This lets us size the repair area accurately from the image.

• Drainage. Where the water goes. A shot showing the fall of the surface, the nearest sump or channel, and any pooling. Water is what drives most failures, so this shapes the method.

Number the zones, send a few shots of each, and add a one-line note per zone if there is context a photo misses. That is enough to scope most lots.

How a fixed price is set and held without a site visit

From the photos we identify the defect type, size the area against your scale object, read the drainage, and choose the method. We price the full method: saw-cut back to sound asphalt, tack coat, compaction, edge seal, plus traffic management and any line-marking reinstatement. Then we hold that price. It is not an estimate that firms up on the day. It is the number you will pay, written down before the crew arrives.

This is the same scope discipline you would apply to a full car park repair, just delivered from your desk instead of a meeting.

Why fixed price kills the on-the-day blowout

The fear with any quote is the day-of surprise: the crew arrives, the price moves up, and you are over a barrel because they are already on site. "Provisional" and "subject to site" pricing is where that lives. A held fixed price removes it. The number on the quote is the number on the invoice. You can take it to a budget holder or a board knowing it will not move under you. That certainty is the whole point of quoting this way.

When a site visit IS still needed

Honesty matters here, or the fixed price means nothing. Photos quote the surface. They cannot see through it. A site visit, or lifting a section, is genuinely needed when:

• Base failure is suspected. If the asphalt is failing because the layer underneath has gone, that is only confirmable by opening it up. Surface photos can hint at it but not prove it.

• Re-grading or drainage redesign is involved. Changing how the lot sheds water needs levels taken on site, not estimated from images.

When we see these signs in your photos, we tell you straight up rather than quoting a number we would have to revise. Most defects do not hit this. The ones that do, we flag before you have committed to anything.

The same logic applies to a single pothole repair: photos quote it unless there is a base problem hiding underneath.

Turnaround you can plan around

Photos in, fixed quote out within 24 hours. Accept it, and we book the work within 48. For a live, public-access lot we bring cones, signage and a spotter, and we can work after-hours or in stages so trading carries on. Every job is backed by the 12-month workmanship warranty.

Linking the quote to the before/after record

The photos you send to get quoted become the start of the record. We pair them with dated after photos when the job is done, so you end up with a before-and-after report tied to the exact defects you flagged. That report is worth keeping. It proves the hazard was repaired, it feeds your maintenance file, and it stands as a liability record if a claim is ever made about that surface. The quote, the photos and the proof of fix all connect, with no site visit anywhere in the chain.

Send your zone photos and we will hold a fixed price you can drop straight into next week's schedule. Get a fixed quote without giving up a morning to a site walk-around.

---

Get a photo-quote →