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Goodhead's above advice is all very accurate. We just fully refurbed and extended a 1949 mid terrace ex council house.
From a shrewd perspective, and if they will do it and stick to it, try to get a fixed price with a very well defined scope. There will be things they've not accounted for, secret concrete slab where they expected clay and sand, weird non-standard post war construction, walls being much shitter than thought so full replaster etc. If you can shift these onto the builder to swallow the budget bloom won't be so extreme. They should price higher to start with but in my experience it'll still be under how much work it takes.
If possible order all materials yourself. It's a lot of work and you need to be on it to get them what they need when they need it, but you could side-step the 20 to 40% contingency they'll add (to pay for them chasing suppliers, returning the wrong thing, driving to merchants etc).
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dbr
Some of them have interior secondary glazing which is handy, but it's not feasible everywhere. On some of them the cast stone exterior sill has blown due to the reinforcing bar in it rusting, so the whole area needs dismantling anyway.
We're not getting exterior insulation done (if you mean cladding the outside of the building), Interior insulation on external walls has been proposed, but that may be something to jettison partly because of the cost of it in and of itself, but also because all those walls would then require replastering.