Timber frames, historic buildings, energy standards: a shop's own record

Three kinds of specialist work, and what a buyer asks about each

Specialist work draws specific questions. Someone planning a timber frame wants to know who has raised frames like theirs, and where. The owner of a protected house wants to know who has worked on buildings like it, and whether that work went through the approvals it needed. Someone building to an energy standard wants to know who has built to that standard before. Each question asks about the past, and the answer is a list of projects.

A label answers none of them. "Heritage specialists" and "timber frame experts" are phrases any site can carry, and an AI assistant that repeats them passes on nothing a reader can check. "[n] oak frame extensions since [year], in [town] and [town]" is a record, and it is the evidence of experience that the first E in E-E-A-T stands for.

The three kinds of work share a page because their record has the same three parts: what you built, where and when; what each project went through; and what you hold. This page covers only that record. It says nothing about how to do the work and states no rule, which belongs to the heritage authority or the building department where a building stands. The facts every commission carries are in what a made-to-measure workshop can state.

The record for each specialty, in one table

Keep the three columns apart. The first is what you did. The second is what happened to the project, which the owner or the architect may have arranged and you took part in. The third is what you hold. A building certified to a standard carries the building's record, and a certification held by someone on your team is that person's; neither stands in for the other.

Approvals: what your projects went through, never what the rule is

Write approvals as history. "The owner obtained [the consent] from [the authority] before we started; we supplied [joinery drawings and a schedule of repairs] for the application" is a fact about one project, and it is yours to publish. A sentence that says what the rules require, for any building anywhere, is the authority's to write. It goes on no page of yours, however sure of it you are, because the rules differ from place to place and change.

When a homeowner asks what their building needs, the page's answer is a pointer: "Whether your building needs [a consent or a permit] for this work is for [the heritage authority or building department where it stands] to say. We can show you the approvals our past projects went through." That sentence holds for every building, and it keeps the shop out of advice it is in no position to give.

Name the authority, the project and the building only with the owner's permission, and describe a private house by its type, period and town, never its address. Documenting reference projects covers permission, privacy and the full write-up of each job; a specialist project uses the same write-up, with the approvals line added.

Project:        [oak frame extension], [town], completed [month year]
Our part:       [frame designed with (engineer), cut in our workshop, raised on site]
Approvals:      [permit obtained by (the owner) in (month year); we supplied (drawings)]
Certification:  [none sought]  or  [certified to (standard) by (body), (year), per the owner]
Permission:     [owner agreed to the town and photos on (date); no address]

Certifications, worded exactly as the certifying body words them

State a certification only if the shop, or a named person on the team, holds it, and write it as it was issued: its name in the certifying body's words, the body's name, the number, and the dates it runs between. Link to the body's public register entry where one exists, so a reader can check it. A course attended is a course, not a certification, unless the body that ran it says it is one.

An energy standard of the kind this page means is a certification run by a certifying body, not a law. Say which buildings you built to it, and write "certified" only where the certifying body certified the building. A house designed to a standard's targets and never certified is described as exactly that, in plain words; the energy rules that apply to a building are its building department's to state.

In structured data, a certification the business holds can sit on its HomeAndConstructionBusiness node as hasCertification, which schema.org gives a Certification as its value, with properties such as issuedBy, certificationIdentification, validFrom and expires; schema.org also defines hasCredential for a credential awarded to a person or an organization. Mark up only what the page shows, as Google's introduction to structured data asks, so the certification sentence goes on the page first.

Where the specialist record sits on the site

Give each specialty you want more of a page of its own, with its three columns and each project linked to its full write-up as a case study. Put the certifications on the about page too, beside the people who hold them. Link each specialist page from the kinds of work it relates to, such as a timber frame page from extensions, or a historic buildings page from windows, doors and staircases, and from the overview for carpenters and joiners.

Keep the record dated and current. A project list that stops years ago says the specialty is in the past; one with this year's work on it says it is not. Add each project when it is handed over, rather than in a batch once a year.

To see whether answers about a specialty mention you, give it a line in your panel, such as "timber frame builder for a [barn] in [region]" or "joiner for [sash windows] in a protected house in [town]", and read it with the rest, as AI visibility for carpenters sets out.