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Understanding Your Budget
We encourage you to think of your overall project cost, not what each individual part of the project will cost. In the end, you have a certain amount of time, energy, and money to devote to your project. Let us help you get the best project you can for your available resources.
What are some of the costs of your project?
- Construction cost (by far and away the largest number). This depends on the project, but can be estimated at $300 to $350 per square foot in many cases. Your square-foot cost would be lower for larger projects than for smaller projects because of economy of scale. Please note: there are some alternative building systems that could reduce the square-foot cost of a new home, but they don't really work well for additions or remodels.
- Soft costs. These include architectural / engineering fees and permit fees among other things.
- Relocation expenses. It depends on the project, but you will probably move out at some point.
- Loss of income. The more of your time you spend on the project, the less you can be at work producing your regular income. The more you earn, the more you want to hire us to do as much as possible for you.
- Stress. Projects are difficult, time-consuming, and stressful. The more professional your team, and the more help we provide, the better. But there will always be some stressful times.
- Time away from family. Like stress, this isn't quantifiable in terms of dollars and cents, but it is still a cost that many people want to minimize.
A Myth about Reducing Costs
Some people tell us they have a budget of so much for construction and so much for soft costs. Often these people tell us they're trying to minimize the costs of each separate “piece” of the project. This is not possible because minimizing the soft costs will not reduce the construction cost... and the construction cost is usually more than 80% of your overall project cost. So to save money we recommend you focus on reducing (or at least controlling) your construction costs with our help.
Klopf Architecture can Help You Manage Costs
Having a qualified professional on your side is an expense. But is it going to make your overall project cost higher? Maybe or maybe not. Our services reduce many of your other costs; on some projects our services will reduce your other costs enough to offset what you have paid us. On other projects the money spent may be a bit more but we'll reduce your costs of stress, lost income, and time away from family. For any project, we can help you control your largest cost by far: construction costs.
How to Minimize Overall Project Cost
We can't emphasize enough that the place to find the biggest savings will be your construction cost. In a sample project, cutting 10% off the construction cost reduces the overall project cost by more than 8%. To save 8% by reducing your soft costs, you'd have to cut architectural services by 50% to 80% (depending on the project and the architectural scope of services). From our perspective that would be pennywise and pound foolish. On that sample project you could take advantage of professional services from the beginning to the end, have a smoother, more predictable project that's far more likely to turn out the way you want, and if you cut 10% off the construction cost you'll pay the same amount overall.
Controlling Construction Costs
In some projects, we won't be able to reduce construction costs by 10% (or by any amount). That's because construction costs what it costs and people's project appetites are typically bigger than their budgets. There is a certain minimum level of quality we must include in each project, so it's not in the architect's power to make construction really cheap. If you want really dirt cheap construction, I'm sure there are ways to get that done, but it probably wouldn't involve us.
Klopf Architecture can help you control your construction costs by helping you get a fixed bid for the largest portion of your project cost: construction. We can work with you create a detailed "game plan" for the contractor to stick to that he/she will price out before you sign their contract. More certainty in the drawings and specifications removes the guesswork from contractor bidding. They'll know more about the real cost and schedule of your project up front, and therefore you'll get the best possible price. And again, the price will be fixed so you will control your biggest cost.
Contingency
We also recommend that you establish a contingency for your design and construction budget. Contingency is an amount over-and-above what you wanted to spend. A design contingency prepares you in case your project becomes larger, more complex, or changes repeatedly. In these cases you would pay your design team extra for the additional services. The construction contingency prepares you for the potential that a project will change to some extent during construction.
Klopf Architecture can help you control contingency costs. To keep the design contingency costs down, we outline your project goals and program (so that the scope is well-defined), and also give you a possible overall cost spreadsheet before you hire us (read more about these). Depending on the project we may not provide those, but generally we do.
To help keep construction contingency, our preliminary overall cost spreadsheet includes a construction contingency line item for you (we usually put in 10%); if you hire us for the services mentioned in "contrlling constuction costs" above, giving you more control your construction costs will keep your construction contingency costs to a minimum.
If You're Interested in Services that are not "Required" for your Project
Sometimes you'll require a level of quality, a level of predictability during construction (cost and/or schedule), or a level of attentiveness in project management that architects like Klopf Architecture are expert in providing... even though your project is small. If this is true for you, you may want to work with an architect so your project turns out the way you want it to. If you haven't already, see how we work with out clients.
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