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Reimagined Construction

Design-build renovation

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How we are set up

One team, so there is nobody to blame but us

  1. All services
  2. /Design-Build

In the traditional arrangement the designer draws, the builder prices, and when the two disagree the client is the one holding both contracts. Design-build removes that seam.

One table, the drawing and the estimate open together

01

What's included

  • Design and construction under one agreement.

  • Continuous pricing as the design develops, rather than a single reveal at tender.

  • Buildability tested while drawings can still change cheaply.

  • One schedule covering design, permitting and construction.

  • One point of accountability for the result.

Fig. 01 — Design developed against a live cost model
Fig. 02 — A single contract covering both halves of the work
Fig. 03 — The same people on site who drew it
02

What the work involves

Fig. 04 — The estimate updated in the same meeting as the drawing

In a design-bid-build job you find out what the design costs after it is finished. If the number is wrong, you pay to redesign, and the redesign is priced by the same process that produced the first surprise.

Here the price develops alongside the drawings. You learn what a decision costs while you are still making it, which is the only point at which that information is worth anything.

Fig. 05 — Where the risk sits when one party holds both

The traditional split lets each party point at the other. A detail that cannot be built the way it was drawn becomes an argument about whether it was drawn wrong or built wrong, and the client funds the argument.

With one contract that argument has nowhere to go. It is our problem in both directions.

Fig. 06 — One team at one table — and no second opinion in the room

Competitive tender. You are not putting a finished design out to three builders to find the lowest number, and we will not pretend that is nothing.

What you get instead is a price that has been tested continuously against buildability, and no incentive for anyone to bid low and recover it through change orders.

03

What drives the cost

How long it takes

Four to seven months before construction starts

Discovery, design, preconstruction and permitting. It feels long, and it is the phase where every decision is still cheap to change.

Design and preconstruction together generally run 8% to 15% of the eventual construction cost. That is money spent before a wall moves, and it is the reason the construction number stops moving.

Discovery fee
$3,500 – $15,000

Scaled to the size of the house and how much has to be opened up. Credited against the design fee if you proceed.

Design fee
6% – 12% of construction cost

Lower at the top of the range of project sizes, higher on small or structurally complex work.

Structural engineering
$4,000 – $25,000

Required on anything touching load paths or the foundation. Carried openly, not buried in overhead.

Permitting
$2,000 – $12,000

City fees plus the time to manage review. Historic district review adds to both.

04

How it runs

  1. 01

    Inquiry

    A walkthrough and an honest range before either of us commits.

  2. 02

    Discovery

    Paid, and the first point at which the number means anything.

  3. 03

    Design

    Drawings and pricing developing together, in step.

  4. 04

    Preconstruction

    The number becomes a fixed contract sum.

  5. 05

    Construction

    Same team, same accountability, no handover of blame.

05

Living through it

Nothing happens to your house during design. You are living normally, making decisions, and responding to drawings.

The pace is set by how fast you answer. A design phase that stretches is almost always waiting on a client decision rather than on drawings.

Once construction starts, whether you stay depends on the scope rather than on the contract type.

Fig. 07 — Weekly meeting on site, drawings on the plywood
Fig. 08 — Selections reviewed in the room they belong to
Fig. 09 — The published schedule, marked up as it moves

Work like this

↔
Houston Heights
1924 bungalow, taken back to the studs
↔
West University
Kitchen opened to the back of the house

The things people worry about

  1. 01How change orders work
  2. 02What happens when something is wrong behind a wall
  3. 03The full process

Common questions

That is a good route when the design is the point — an unusual house, a strong architectural idea, or a client who wants a design advocate independent of the builder. We do that work too, under architect-led construction. It is a worse route when your priority is cost certainty, because you get one number at the end of a long process and no way to steer toward it.

The discovery fee is credited against the design fee if you proceed. The design fee itself buys drawings you own and can take elsewhere. Roughly one in five discovery engagements ends without construction, usually because the scope and the budget do not meet. That is the discovery phase working, not failing.

If one contract sounds better than two

The first step is the same either way — a walkthrough, and an honest conversation about scope and budget.

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