Design-build coordination

What it replaces

The conventional route is design-bid-build. You hold one contract with an architect and a separate one with a builder. The architect draws, the set goes out to bid, and you are the party standing between the two when the numbers come back.

That structure is not wrong, and on some projects it is the right one. What it does is put the owner in the middle of every disagreement about whether something was drawn buildable or priced fairly.

Pricing while the design is still on paper

The expensive version of a custom project goes: months of drawing, a set issued for bid, bids over budget, and then paying the architect a second time to draw it smaller.

Pre-construction pricing means the design gets costed as it develops. When a detail is unaffordable you hear it while it is still a line on a drawing, which is the cheapest moment it will ever be to change.

A schedule of values before anything is built

Before construction starts you get the job broken into line items with a value against each. Draws are then tied to work that is finished rather than to dates on a calendar.

It also gives you a document to argue with. A single lump sum is impossible to question; a schedule of values tells you what you are paying for and lets you challenge any line of it.

Somebody owns the paperwork

Permit submittal, plan-check corrections, engineering revisions, and the architectural review package if a committee applies. Four permitting authorities operate inside this valley and each expects its own submittal.

On a split contract this is the work that falls between the architect and the builder, because it belongs to neither of them by default. Here it is ours, and chasing it is not billed to you as a change.

What it does not fix

You still need an architect. Design-build changes who holds the contract, not whether the house needs designing, and we are not a substitute for that work.

It also removes the competitive bid, which is a real thing to give up. The honest way to replace it is to ask for the subcontractor bids behind each line, ask what is allowance and what is priced, and ask what happens to the money if a line comes in under. We will answer all three. A builder who will not is the reason that question exists.