When to involve us
The Cheapest Time to Change the Cost
Bringing a contractor in at bid means the cost decisions were all made without cost information.
Bring the site, the unit count and the drawings at whatever stage. You get a range, the drivers, and an honest read on the pro forma.
What gets decided before anyone prices it
Typology, structural system, unit mix, parking ratio, floor plate and envelope. Every one of those is a cost decision, and on a conventional process all of them are fixed before a contractor sees the drawings.
By bid, the building costs what it costs. Value engineering at that stage is mostly specification substitution, which trades quality for a small fraction of what a structural or massing decision would have saved.
What early involvement actually looks like
Not a contractor sitting in design meetings adding nothing. Specific, answerable questions at the points where they matter.
- Site test: does the geotechnical report support this typology at all?
- Structural system compared on total cost including schedule, not per square foot.
- Parking strategy tested against yield before the massing is fixed.
- Plate repetition assessed — architectural variation between floors is expensive.
- Long-lead items identified while the schedule can still absorb them.
The honest version
If the construction budget in your pro forma cannot buy the building in the drawings, we will say so at entitlement rather than at bid.
That conversation is unwelcome and it is far better than the alternative, which is a bid that comes in high, a redesign that costs months, and a deal that no longer works.
FAQ
Common questions
- When should a contractor be involved?
- At entitlement or early design development, when cost decisions are still cheap to change.
- Does that commit us to using you?
- No, and it should not. Preconstruction and construction are separable.
- Is value engineering at bid useless?
- Not useless, just limited. The big savings were available in decisions already made.
- What if the pro forma does not work?
- We will tell you at entitlement. That is the point of being there early.
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.