There exists a version of this trade that operates on how quickly a drive can be made to look finished. Skim over the old surface, get it swept, get paid. It looks right for a couple of winters and then the same cracks come back through, because nothing underneath ever changed. We operate the other way round. The dig, the sub-base and the edgings require most of the time on site and none of the credit, and they are the reason a drive is still flat and still draining years later. If we tell you a job needs more excavation than you were expecting, it is because the alternative is doing it twice. The other half of what we do is behind the house: patios oriented for where the sun actually is in the evening, retaining walls that turn a slope into somewhere you can put a table, hedges and trees brought back under control, and lawns that are not just turf laid on compacted builders' rubble. It is the same principle either side of the house. Sort the ground first.