When you go out to eat, you hope for tasty food, for a good price, with good portions/service. We work hard to earn our money, so if we are going to pay someone to cook a meal for us, we expect to be treated well, not need to clean our own dishes, and be happy with the food they feed us. If we want really high quality gourmet food, there is an expectation that it will cost more and generally come with attentive service. I don’t think anyone expects a gourmet meal with good service to also be cheap. You get 2 out of the 3 things. Good food, good service, not so good price at the fancy restaurant. That is fine. It’s expected. You are paying more for quality. If you just want an average meal at an average restaurant, you might expect the portions to be bigger, the price to be lower, but the food to be just ok. That is fine too. You get 2 out of the 3 things. Good price, good portions, but not the best food at the fast food place. You are paying less for lower quality.
This analogy translates into construction as well. When you hire a builder that does really high quality work, you expect that work to cost more. Or if you want the work to be done really quickly, you should also expect it to cost more (to compensate for the rework that will need to happen as the sequencing of construction steps cannot be controlled, and the builder needs to effectively pay to build some things twice since they could not measure twice and cut once - as the saying goes). If you want really good service, you would also expect that to cost more. If you want a lower price, you should therefore also expect the quality and service to be lower.
When one of the three factors of price, quality, and service is better than the others, the other factors will inevitably be lower. The saying goes, “you get what you pay for.” This is very true in construction. I see this very often. When people choose the lowest priced builder, they are often disappointed when they realize the quality is not great or they don’t have the opportunity to make design or detail decisions during the build. This should be expected. When paying a premium for a really good builder, you can also expect to have the ability to provide feedback for construction details along the way, so you can get exactly what you want. Higher quality (higher priced) builders, offer this level of service, while lower quality (lower priced) builders simply build what suits themselves (their own interpretation of what they think should be built). Client input derails their process and causes the price to go higher.
We work with many different builders who work at different levels of quality, and we advise our clients on which builders are best suited to meet their goals. Some clients expect a high level of detail and others could care less. As we get to know our clients during the design process, we get a pretty good idea of what our clients expect.
If you’d like to learn more about our design process, visit www.josharch.com/process, and if you’d like to get us started on your project with a feasibility report, please visit www.josharch.com/help