How D&C Builders Can Improve Design Efficiency (& ROI)
Re-design or value management by your design people is a waste of everyone’s time and money. Instead, D&C builders can align budget and concept from the very beginning. Here’s how…
Historically designers and architects have struggled to conceptualise without a nagging doubt about budget.
If you’re a D&C builder, you know how it goes.
You attract a great prospect who seems a good fit for your business and they provide a brief to your design people who then try to develop a concept that won’t blow the client’s budget.
Fearful of losing the client, you’re then dragged into the process to help the designer/architect verify costs and make sure nothing goes wrong.
This often results in hours of your time creating costings, followed by additional hours from your design person re-designing or value managing.
Instead, Why Not Have Your Designer Manage Budget at Sketch Stage?
To eliminate all this pain, why not resource your designer check construction costs earlier in the design process?
That is, test each of their pre-concept sketches (and iterations) with ProCalc (free trial) for the likely budget impacts before you even see concepts.
Then when your designer is ready to share concepts with the client, they can present them more confidently with the knowledge construction costs align with their budget.
This means you won’t waste hours checking and then refining a design the client can’t afford.
Providing budget estimates to clients early on, empowers them to approve progression or request value management much earlier in the process should it be needed.
For icing on the cake, the client is far more likely to progress to build because you’ve addressed any budget issues when the design was still at sketch phase.
This approach allows you to support your designs with the required budget estimates all the way through your design process. It helps you manage client expectations (and scope creep) while eliminating those anxiety-riddled budget conversations that clients struggle to digest.
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Richard Armstrong is a former registered builder who recently interviewed hundreds of experienced Australian builders to identify how they best manage clients, budgets and profitability.
