INTEGRATING PRELIMINARY COST PROJECTIONS INTO THE EARLY DESIGN PROCESS
At Design Associates, we pride ourselves on putting forth and developing design solutions that are in alignment with your project budget. How do we do that? With close to 30 years of experience, we can confidently present preliminary cost projections at our very first design presentation. On some occasions, our preliminary cost projects will suggest that the owner's wish list and the budget don't align with one another, presenting our client with a not uncommon conundrum, that being the need for budget and project requirements to be in balance with one another.
So, rather than continuing to refine, develop the design, prepare limited construction drawings and put the project out to bid to several contractors, only to find that it's way over budget, Design Associates focuses on having this budget discussion at the very beginning of the project. This saves you design dollars and time as we are integrating the subject of construction costs into the design phase, seeking to design a project at the outset that you can afford to build.
Doug Stevenson of Kistler and Knapp Builders in Acton has said that many architects do not estimate costs very well and so they develop architectural designs that are over the owner's budget. And this is not discovered until much later in the architectural process. So it becomes more costly and takes more time to re-design. Doug Stevenson has said, and I quote, "Of all of the Greater Boston area architects that we work with, Design Associates is by far the best at designing to a construction budget."
Christopher L. Dallmus, AIA