Long before there is a full drawing set, someone has to answer the question: can this project pencil?
Conceptual estimating works from limited information – a site, a program, a massing study, sometimes just a square footage target. The output is a range with clearly stated assumptions, not a hard number.
The stages of a preconstruction budget
- Order of magnitude – cost per square foot by building type and market, useful for feasibility
- Conceptual – systems-level pricing from a massing study or program
- Schematic – assembly-level quantities from early drawings
- Design development – detailed quantities, still with allowances
- Hard bid – full takeoff against a complete set
Where budgets go wrong
Three things, almost always: soft costs left out, escalation to the midpoint of construction not carried, and contingency set by optimism rather than by design completeness. An early estimate with ten percent design contingency and no escalation is not conservative – it is wrong.
A good preconstruction budget names its assumptions loudly enough that everyone reading it knows what is and is not included.
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