Eight weeks into design, a building committee asked us a fair question: what exactly have you been doing? Design takes as long as it does because design is not drawing, it is deciding. Here is what actually happens in schematic design, design development, and construction documents, and why the design schedule is really a decision schedule.
Most owners assume that getting the drawings done is the finish line. It is not. The period between completed construction documents and an issued building permit is one of the most consequential and least understood phases of any project, and how well you navigate it determines when your contractor can actually start.
There is a particular silence that falls when the construction bids land well above budget. How a firm responds in that moment reveals what kind of partner you actually hired. Here is how we treat an over-budget bid as a design problem, not just an accounting one.
