Working with architects and designers in Los Angeles

We price your design at each phase, from the concept package to construction documents, so the owner sees the cost of a decision while there is still time to change course. Each estimate lists the scope by trade, with every allowance, hold and exclusion named, so it is clear what the budget includes and which issue of your drawings it was priced from. We price the project you designed, including estimating the unknowns in the drawings where scope has not been fully developed, so the client doesn’t hear about scope gaps from drawings that were not complete yet. What the owner receives at each stage is set out under preconstruction services.

We track an open items list during design and an RFI log during construction, and work through both with your team, so every item needed to price the project accurately, and then to build it, has an answer. Where an allowance is appropriate, we state its basis, and where the team needs an investigation or a design decision, we identify that next step.

Before a hard number is asked for, we review the set with your team: how far each discipline has developed, where the engineering and the architecture still need to be coordinated, and whether the existing conditions have been surveyed or assumed. We work through the drawing questions with your team so the scope, assumptions and open decisions can be explained clearly to the owner.

The goal is a permit set that is in line with budget and schedule expectations, and maintains the original design intent.

The character of a space often depends on how the details come together, and most of those details sit where one trade meets another. We work through those points with your team and the trades who build them, from millwork and stone to lighting and exposed services, while there is still room to change them.

Samples and mockups are standard practice on our projects. Your team reviews the sample or the mockup before a detail is repeated through the space, and what was agreed at that review is what the trades build from.

Owner-furnished and designer-specified items are received, stored, protected and installed on a plan agreed with your team, and finished work is protected until handover.

We work back from procurement and installation dates to plan drawing questions and submittal reviews. An RFI identifies the relevant sheets, the decision needed and its required date, with a proposed approach where we can offer one. The three-week look-ahead keeps those decisions connected to the work in the field. Every submittal is checked against your drawings and specifications before it reaches you, and every question or RFI is referenced against the drawings before it is sent to you. No product is substituted without your review.

When the field runs into something that doesn’t align with the drawings, we stop and call you before it is built, with the drawing details to reference and our proposed solution. The owner hears about it from both of us, with a recommendation.