Pre-construction: where most budgets are won or lost

Most cost overruns are not caused on site. They are caused by scope nobody priced, risks nobody owned and schedules nobody tested. By the time they show up as a change order, the money is already spent.

Pre-construction is where we find those gaps while they still cost nothing to close. On a typical project it takes eight to twelve weeks, and it decides most of what the building will cost.

Three questions we ask on every project

What is not drawn yet? What could arrive late? What happens if it rains for a month? Every answer becomes a line in the estimate or a float in the schedule, so the risk has a price and an owner before anyone signs.

• Unfinished design is priced as an allowance with a clear limit, not left as a blank.

• Every long-lead item, from switchgear to curtain wall, gets an order date in the schedule.

• Weather, access and neighbour constraints are walked on site, not assumed from the drawings.

Live prices, not book rates

Our estimates are built from current subcontractor quotes for the trades that carry most of the cost. Book rates are fine for a first number, but they hide the market. When steel or labour moves, we want to know before the client does.

The cheapest place to solve a problem is on paper. Every risk we price out in pre-construction is one that never reaches the site.

Crane positions and delivery routes are fixed in pre-construction, before the first lift.

What the client gets

At the end of pre-construction the client has a line-item estimate, a resource-loaded schedule and a risk register with an owner for every item. They can take it to their board, to their lender or to another contractor. Most choose to build with us, because the numbers are ours to keep.

On our last fifty projects, the final cost landed within three percent of the pre-construction estimate. That is not luck. It is the work done before the first shovel.