About Impact Build
Impact Build is a registered building company headquartered in Kyneton, Victoria, delivering renovations, extensions, heritage restorations and architectural new homes across the Macedon Ranges and regional Victoria. Founded by Luke Said, a Master Builder with hands-on carpentry experience, the company builds homes designed to perform, warm, comfortable, efficient, durable, and built to a standard that holds up decades after handover.
The work is deliberately weighted towards projects where that matters: homes that need to be more comfortable and less expensive to run, not simply larger.
Luke Said is the Director and Master Builder, and he stays closely involved in every project from the first conversation through to handover. He leads pre-construction and the organisational side of the business personally, and puts considerable time into it, every trade, supplier, material and sequence worked through in detail so a project is as thoroughly organised as it can possibly be before anyone sets foot on site. That groundwork is the reason Impact Build sites run the way they do.
Once construction starts, Luke remains directly involved in the oversight of the work, supported by an on-site team that includes project management. That team runs day-to-day delivery to Luke's systems, processes and expectations, and holds the same standard of quality he does, which is the point of building the structure this way. It means projects are managed properly and consistently rather than depending on one person being in one place, and it means clients get an organised, professional build that meets the brief and, wherever Impact Build can find the opportunity, goes beyond it.
Clients are looked after at every level: if you have a question on site, you get a straight answer from whoever is in front of you.
Impact Build is headquartered in Kyneton, Victoria, with an office and factory facility that houses in-house carpentry and joinery alongside project planning, so a meaningful amount of each build is made and coordinated under Impact Build's own roof rather than subcontracted out.
The core service area is the Macedon Ranges, Hepburn Shire and Mount Alexander Shire, including Woodend, Kyneton, Gisborne, Macedon, Mount Macedon, Riddells Creek, Romsey, Lancefield, Castlemaine, Daylesford and Trentham. Impact Build also works well beyond that, projects have been delivered towards Ballarat and Bendigo, through Mitchell Shire, and into parts of metropolitan Melbourne.
Yes. The Macedon Ranges, Hepburn Shire and Mount Alexander Shire are the core service area, but Impact Build covers a genuinely broad region, projects have been delivered towards Ballarat and Bendigo, through Mitchell Shire, and into parts of metropolitan Melbourne.
The deciding factor is the project rather than the postcode: whether Impact Build's own team and established trades can service the site properly and hold the same standard there as anywhere else. If a location makes that difficult, you will be told early rather than partway through.
It protects you if a builder cannot complete the work, or cannot come back to fix defective work. For contracts signed from 1 July 2026, Victoria's Home Warranty scheme, administered by the Building and Plumbing Commission, responds directly rather than only when the builder is insolvent, missing or deceased, which is a meaningful improvement for homeowners.
Maximum cover is $400,000. Cover runs for six years after completion for structural defects and two years for non-structural defects. The certificate is issued in your name before any deposit is taken, and Impact Build provides it with the project documentation. Current details are published at bpc.vic.gov.au.
Impact Build is a member of the Master Builders Association of Victoria (MBAV). Luke is also active in a number of builders' groups alongside other industry professionals, builders, designers and consultants who share what is working, what isn't, and what is changing in materials, methods and building performance.
That is not a box-ticking exercise. Building well is a field that keeps moving, particularly around energy efficiency and thermal performance, and having a network of people genuinely invested in doing it properly means knowledge compounds rather than being learned the hard way on a client's project.
What We Do
Renovations, extensions, heritage restorations, energy upgrades, outbuildings and architectural new homes. Renovation, extension and heritage work has long been the core of the business, and Impact Build is increasingly focused on custom new homes where there is scope to get the fundamentals right from the ground up.
Running through all of it is a focus on how a home actually performs once it is finished: thermal comfort, running costs, airtightness, moisture management and material longevity. Impact Build is actively deepening its knowledge in this area, because in this climate it is the difference between a house that looks good and a house that is genuinely good to live in.
Yes, and it is work Impact Build takes seriously. Kyneton and much of the Macedon Ranges hold some of the finest heritage housing stock in regional Victoria, much of it sitting within heritage overlay areas that shape material selection, permit requirements and what Council and Heritage Victoria will approve.
Restoring one of these homes properly is a different exercise to renovating a standard house. Impact Build has done enough of it to know what is genuinely involved, the substrates that will be found once things open up, the trades and specialist skills required, the material choices that are compliance decisions as much as design ones, and the volume of careful work needed to bring a building back to its best and leave it performing well for the next generation of owners.
That experience means clients get a realistic picture from the start: an honest account of the scope, the cost and the time involved, rather than an optimistic one that unravels three months in. It also means the opportunities get identified early, a heritage restoration is often the single best chance to quietly lift a home's insulation, glazing and thermal performance while the building is already open, without touching its character.
Yes, and it is a direction the business is actively growing. Impact Build's interest is in architectural, design-driven homes where the brief goes beyond floor area, houses shaped around how people want to live, and built to perform.
A new build is the one opportunity to get orientation, envelope, glazing, insulation and airtightness right from the beginning rather than retrofitting them later at several times the cost. Impact Build works closely with architects and designers who think the same way, and would rather build a well-resolved, efficient home than a larger indifferent one.
Work that makes an existing home substantially more comfortable and less expensive to run. The principles are well established internationally and they are refreshingly unglamorous, get these six things right and a house behaves completely differently:
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Continuous, generous insulation to walls, roof and floor, without gaps or compressed sections, so the whole envelope performs rather than most of it.
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Eliminating thermal bridges, the junctions, framing members and structural penetrations where heat quietly bypasses the insulation.
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An airtight envelope, properly sealed and detailed. Uncontrolled draughts are one of the largest heat losses in most existing homes and among the least expensive to address.
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High-performance windows and glazing, double or triple glazed, well-specified frames, correctly installed and sealed into the opening.
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Controlled ventilation with heat recovery, so a sealed home gets a constant supply of fresh filtered air while retaining the warmth that would otherwise be thrown away.
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Managing solar gain, orientation, glazing placement, shading and eaves, so the sun heats the house in winter and stays out of it in summer.
Impact Build applies these principles as far as each project allows, and is actively building deeper capability in this area because it is the single biggest lever on how a home feels to live in. In the Macedon Ranges, where heating runs for much of the year, these upgrades routinely deliver more day-to-day benefit per dollar than additional floor area, and the sensible time to do them is during a renovation, while walls, ceilings and floors are already open and the access costs nothing. Impact Build will always raise it as an option, because doing it later costs several times as much.
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Impact Build works alongside a client's existing architect or designer and actively encourages it, the earlier the builder is in that relationship, the better the outcome, because design decisions are easy to change on paper and costly to change on site. Collaboration through the design stage is one of the things Impact Build values most in a project.
Where a client hasn't appointed anyone yet, Impact Build works with a strong network of industry professionals across the region and will point clients towards the right people for their project, architects and building designers, interior designers, and the relevant consultants a project needs, from engineers and energy assessors through to heritage and landscape specialists. Getting the right team assembled around a brief is a significant part of bringing it to life.
The Process
No. You don't need drawings, you don't need a planning permit, and you don't need anything approved. Impact Build actively encourages bringing a builder in as early as possible, and early can mean earlier than most people assume.
Some of the most valuable conversations happen before a property has even been bought. If you are looking at a block of land, or at a house you are considering purchasing to renovate, Impact Build can help you understand what the site will realistically allow, what building there is likely to involve, and whether the property actually suits what you are trying to achieve. Knowing that before you commit is worth a great deal more than finding it out afterwards.
Early involvement is also where real value gets created. It allows accurate cost thinking to be developed while decisions are still easy to change on paper rather than expensive to change on site, so the design can be steered towards something genuinely buildable within the budget you have. It opens up value management, reviewing where money is best spent, what can be simplified without losing the intent of the design, and where investing a little more in the envelope or the detailing will pay you back for the life of the home.
Impact Build works collaboratively with architects and designers throughout this stage, and finds the projects that run best are the ones where builder and designer have been talking from early on. The conversation starts with scope, budget and feasibility, not drawings, and the earlier it starts, the more useful it is.
A qualifying build estimate is the first stage of Impact Build's pricing: an early-stage cost picture developed before detailed plans are finalised, giving the design process a realistic framework to work within rather than locking anything in. Without one, it is easy to spend months and thousands of dollars on plans that don't align with what the build will actually cost.
Pricing then sharpens as the project does. The qualifying estimate is followed by a preliminary estimate as the design and consultant information develop, and then a full estimate once every detail, selection and trade price is resolved. Each stage narrows the range, so by the time anything is being signed the number in front of you is built on real information rather than assumptions.
More than most people expect, and that is deliberate. Every Impact Build project runs through the same structured pre-construction process before a single trade sets foot on site. In broad terms it covers:
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Understanding the project, getting genuinely clear on goals, planning status, how the home needs to perform, and the real budget.
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Being part of the design, working alongside the client and designer while decisions are still easy to change, including performance and value management.
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Resolving the detail, engineering, energy and thermal considerations, site assessment and selections worked through in full rather than left as allowances.
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Agreeing the project properly, documenting scope, inclusions and pricing on the strength of real information, so what you are agreeing to is what will actually be built.
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Coordinating everything, every trade, supplier and material confirmed, ordered and scheduled before anyone arrives on site.
Within each of those sits a great deal of detailed work, and Luke is personally across it. The calm you see on an Impact Build site is the result of months of organised, systemised work that happened before a nail gun was heard.
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Yes. Impact Build offers pre-construction as a paid consultancy engagement, and actively encourages clients to take it up.
The reason is simply the amount of work involved. A great deal of time goes into this stage, engineering and consultant coordination, performance and energy input, site assessment, value management, selections and trade pricing, and the objective is to put as much accurate, reliable information in front of a client as possible before any commitment is made. Treating it as a paid engagement is what allows that time to be properly dedicated to each project rather than spread thin across enquiries. It is consistently where the greatest value is added to a build.
Proposals are detailed and transparent, with every cost line itemised and accounted for so clients know exactly what they are committing to before work begins, including what is fixed, what is an allowance, and what is still to be selected. They are thorough documents, often running to several dozen pages, and Impact Build stays open about where costs sit throughout, so there are no surprises once work starts.
Impact Build does not publish square metre rates, for a straightforward reason: they do not exist in any meaningful way for this style of work. Two homes of identical floor area can differ enormously in cost depending on site access and slope, soil conditions, structural complexity, heritage requirements, the performance being targeted, the level of joinery and finish, and how much of the existing building is being retained or rebuilt. A rate per square metre averages all of that away, and the number it produces is almost never the number that applies to the project in front of you.
Every Impact Build project is priced for what it actually requires. That starts with a qualifying build estimate, an early cost picture developed before detailed plans are finalised, which is then refined through a preliminary estimate and a full estimate as the design and detail resolve. The result is a figure built specifically for your project on real information, which is considerably more useful to plan around than an industry average.
If you have a budget in mind, say so early. It is far easier to design towards a number than to cost-correct a finished design.
Impact Build aims to work on a fixed price wherever possible, and the pre-construction process exists largely to make that achievable, a fixed price is only meaningful if the detail behind it has genuinely been resolved. Some projects, particularly those with significant unknowns behind existing fabric, are better suited to a cost plus arrangement, and where that is the case it is discussed openly and early rather than arrived at by default.
In either case, payments are claimed in stages against work that has been completed, never in advance of it, and any change to the scope is documented as a variation and priced and approved in writing before the work proceeds.
No hidden costs from Impact Build. An enormous amount of time and effort goes into pre-construction precisely so unknowns are identified and resolved before the build starts rather than discovered during it, engineering, site conditions, services, selections and trade pricing worked through in full instead of being carried as provisional sums and “we'll sort it later”. Clients aren't signing up to uncertainty.
On suitable projects, Impact Build is also beginning to encourage 3D modelling through the estimating process. Seeing a project resolved in three dimensions before it is built surfaces the clashes, the awkward junctions and the decisions that would otherwise be found on site, which is exactly where they become expensive.
Two things can still move a final figure, and both are handled openly. If you change your mind about a selection or add to the scope, it becomes a documented variation, priced and approved before the work happens. And if something genuinely unforeseen appears once walls open up, you will know as soon as Impact Build does, along with the cost and the options. What you won't get is a cost you were never told about.
There is no typical. Every home, every site and every scope of works is different, and a duration given before the work is properly understood is a guess dressed up as an answer, which is exactly how programmes end up being revised twice before a slab is poured.
A realistic timeframe comes out of the consultancy and pre-construction process, once the scope, the site conditions, the consultant information and the approvals path are actually known. Impact Build would rather give you a programme late and have it hold than give you one early and have it slip. Council and permit timelines also sit ahead of construction and vary considerably, particularly within heritage overlay areas.
What can be said is that once a programme is set, every trade, supplier and material has already been confirmed and scheduled, so Impact Build programmes are built to be held rather than revised.
Yes, in many cases. Impact Build does not want clients feeling they have to move out, and staged renovations can often be sequenced so part of the home stays liveable throughout.
That said, it is worth deciding early rather than midway. Where the work involves significant structural change, roof removal, envelope upgrades or services disconnection, moving out is often the better option, quicker for the build, less disruptive for the household, and usually easier on everyone involved. It is a genuine trade-off rather than a rule, and Impact Build will give you a straight view on which way it falls for your project. Either way the decision gets worked through during pre-construction so the programme and the budget reflect it from the start.
Standards & Quality
Compliance with the National Construction Code and the relevant Australian Standards is a given on every Impact Build project. It is also the legal minimum, a threshold to clear, not a result to be proud of.
Impact Build's approach is to pursue the highest standard of building that is practical for each particular scope. Every project is different, and what is achievable on a heritage restoration is not what is achievable on a new build, but the intent is the same in each case: identify the best outcome genuinely available within the scope, then build to it. Better insulation and glazing, improved airtightness and thermal detailing, more durable material choices and better-resolved junctions are put forward as a matter of course, with a straight assessment of what each will actually deliver.
The measure that matters is not whether a home passed a compliance check. It is how it performs, and how it has held up, in twenty years.
Mostly it is detail, not equipment. A home that is warm in winter, comfortable in summer and inexpensive to run comes from getting a handful of fundamentals right: orientation and glazing suited to the site, a well-insulated and continuous building envelope, airtightness, controlled ventilation, proper thermal breaks and careful moisture management. None of it is exotic, but all of it depends on execution, and every one of those things is decided long before a fixing carpenter arrives.
This is why Impact Build pushes for these considerations to be resolved during design, and why modelling on suitable projects is worth the effort: it lets performance be understood and tested on paper, and it produces detailing that can then be applied consistently across the whole build. Efficiency is not a product that can be bolted on at lock-up. It is the accumulation of a hundred small decisions made in the right order.
Through systems, not good intentions. Impact Build runs to defined processes and standard operating procedures covering how work is sequenced, how it is checked, how information moves between Luke, the on-site team and the trades, and how clients are kept informed. Those procedures exist because they are what reliably produce a high-quality result, they take the outcome off luck, off memory, and off whoever happens to be on site that day.
Communication is the largest part of it. Trades knowing precisely what is expected before they start, decisions being made early enough to be acted on, and everyone working to the same documented standard is what prevents the small compromises that quietly accumulate into a mediocre build.
The other part is that the standard is shared. Every person on an Impact Build site takes real pride and responsibility in their work and in how they deal with clients. The details at framing stage, how a window is set and sealed, how insulation is laid, how reveals are finished, determine how a home performs for decades after the walls close up. In the Macedon Ranges, where winters are long and cold, these are not minor details.
The Macedon Ranges climate, long cold winters, heavy rainfall and reactive soils, demands closer attention to moisture management, thermal performance and material selection than many other parts of Victoria. Impact Build's experience in the region means these considerations are built into every project from the start, not addressed after problems appear.
Three layers of protection, and they apply regardless of what any agreement says.
Statutory warranties. Victorian domestic building law implies warranties into every domestic building contract, that the work will be carried out in a proper and workmanlike manner, with suitable and good-quality materials, in accordance with the law and the plans, and that the home will be suitable for occupation. These cannot be contracted out of, and an owner can bring an action for breach of them for up to ten years from the issue of the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection.
Statutory building insurance. Sitting behind those warranties, the Building and Plumbing Commission's domestic building insurance and Home Warranty cover responds if a builder cannot complete or cannot rectify, for up to six years after completion for structural defects and two years for non-structural defects.
Product warranties. Manufacturer warranties on materials, products and appliances are collated and handed over as part of the completion documentation, so you know what is covered and for how long.
Beyond the paperwork: Impact Build expects to hear from clients after handover and treats a callback as a normal part of finishing a project properly, not an inconvenience.
Getting Started
The best starting point is the Plan Your Build enquiry form at impactbd.com.au/plan-your-build, which helps Impact Build understand your project from the outset. You can also book a discovery call at calendly.com/luke-impactbd, call 0421 947 811, or email luke@impactbd.com.au.
Less than you might think, and nothing needs to be approved or drawn. A general sense of what you want to achieve, the site address if you have one, your approximate budget and where you are in the process, early thinking, considering a purchase, working with a designer, or holding approved plans, is enough to start a useful conversation. If you have views on how you want the home to perform, or what isn't working about the house you're in now, that is worth mentioning early too.
If you have nothing more than an idea and a property you are thinking about, that is still a good place to start. Impact Build can help fill in the gaps from there.
The Impact Build website at impactbd.com.au has a full overview of services, a portfolio of past projects, and a blog covering pre-construction planning, heritage work, building standards and what to look for in a registered builder. The Instagram page @impactbuild shows active project progress across current builds.
Registration brings licensing, contract obligations, statutory warranties and statutory building insurance protecting the homeowner if something goes wrong, none of which apply to an unregistered carpenter, however skilled. See the full article on the Resources page for more detail.
Not necessarily, and often the opposite. Building smarter rather than larger can deliver more comfort, lower running costs and better long-term value, and the same budget spent on a better-performing envelope, better glazing and better-resolved spaces usually produces a home people enjoy far more than extra square metres they heat and rarely use.
It is a conversation worth having properly for Macedon Ranges clients weighing an extension against a renovation. See the full article on the Resources page for more detail.
Not every project is the right fit. Impact Build is most invested in work that requires real thought, precision and coordination, and in clients who care how the finished home performs, not only how it looks. Being selective isn't about exclusivity; it is about making sure builder and client are genuinely aligned before work begins, because that alignment is what makes the whole process enjoyable rather than adversarial.
Luke reviews every enquiry personally and always aims to reply the same day, and within one business day at the latest. Because the questionnaire covers scope, site and budget up front, that first reply comes back with useful answers and considered feedback rather than a request for more information.
From there, if it looks like a good match, the project suits Impact Build and Impact Build suits the project, the next conversation is about the pre-construction process: what the early stages involve, and how Impact Build can be brought in as a consultant as early as possible so the planning and design work to your benefit rather than needing to be unpicked later.