I have spent the last couple of days beginning to work through preconstruction for two different projects. It is not my favorite aspect of the job, but at this point in my career it is work that I am being paid for, so I view it as such. I am currently knee deep in development of two similar projects, so I figured that now is as good of a time as any to shed a little light on how I do things. This is not the only way of doing things, and with each job I find various efficiencies and techniques that improve my process, but this is where it currently stands. 

As most of you all know, our industry specializes in free estimates, free quotes, and working for next to nothing. While I enjoyed that in my younger years (not at all), I have grown to realize that my experience is worth something rather than nothing. I no longer competitively bid projects, and I offer preconstruction services for my projects. In fact, I will not do a job without preconstruction. It is difficult enough to gauge how long a project will take and what it will cost with a comprehensive preconstruction process let alone while competitively bidding a job and not getting paid for it. Unless you are a larger firm with processes and people in place you are more than likely estimating these jobs after work, during off hours, and hastily. This does not yield great results.

For now, I am going to explain the first part of my process which is scope development. Once we have a design in place, I begin to develop a comprehensive scope for the purpose of putting values to the project. These values consist of time and money. I will begin to create a narrative for the project as if I am building the job on paper. What happens before the first day of work, and how the job will play out each succeeding day and task. I use my line item budget to assign tasks to the narrative and to ensure that I do not miss anything. I use my budget spreadsheet adjacent to my narrative throughout this entire process. There is a bit of overlap which creates a bit of inefficiency, but the redundancy gives me the best chance at creating an accurate scope, which leads to an accurate budget. 

I find it easiest to transfer my line items for the project to a word document which I can expand upon. Anything that pops into my head during my analysis of the construction documents gets added to the scope and to the line items. For example, I was reading through a quote from a framer, and they mentioned that they will cover the project with tarps if need be, but they will not supply the tarps. I immediately went to my line item for framing materials and made a note to add a number for tarps to the project. This $250.00-$300.00 cost may seem insignificant, but for each line item on a project there are similar items that may be missed. My pricing came back for the structural steel, and I noticed they did not quote the nuts, bolts, and washers. It may seem like no big deal in the grand scheme of things when you miss $150.00 on a few-hundred thousand dollar project, but if you have 300 line items and you miss $50.00 on each item, you left $15,000.00 out of the budget. These are costs that will impact the construction budget, and if they should have been accounted for and you simply missed them, you may have to eat the cost. 

The goal with my preconstruction process is to create a budget that is as accurate as possible for the information that was provided to me. That does not mean that I have all of the answers to my questions, or that I understand every detail for the entire project, but I have a scope that describes and accounts for what I do know, what I do not know, and what assumptions are being made. This is the key for preconstruction. We are always making assumptions. There is always missing information. We are always speculating. That is neither here nor there. The critical thing is that we are documenting all of these assumptions, speculations, and missing information. If you do that, you have a leg to stand on once construction commences and you run into issues, overruns, or struggles due to unforeseen circumstances.

To reiterate, my first step is to create a story for the project. To write and document the scope. To create a narrative that your subs, your employees, and most importantly your customers can understand. This is not an easy process and it takes a considerable amount of time. I spent 6 hours yesterday doing this and another 1.5 hours today and I am not yet done. This is for a kitchen renovation and a kitchen/mudroom addition. It is not an overly complex or massive job, but there is a lot to cover. The more I document the better shape I am in when I sign contracts. I would be hard-pressed to afford this level of diligence if I were not being paid for it. It is time-consuming and laborious, but in my opinion a job should not be done without it.