Design Meetings
We take our role in designing your new home or alteration very seriously. We are very focussed on ensuring that the design we come up with meets your expectations exactly for style, layout and most importantly, construction budget. One of very first questions we will ask you when we have our first telephone meeting is what your budget is for the construction of the new home, excluding landscaping, driveway, paths and curtains etc.
Too many times we have had clients come to us for a re-design after their previous designer did not take the time, nor the care, to identify the working budget before proceeding to design what would otherwise have been a fine design, but when priced was far over the budget.
We structure our meetings this way because building your new home involves a sequence of decisions which we call "gates". By moving to each gate and making a decision to proceed or not, you are managing risk, and that is the key focus of our company.
We also make sure at a very early stage in the process that your allocated budget will meet your expectations, providing advice on what we believe the style and size of the proposed design would cost to construct. This ensures no surprises when the official estimate is provided later downstream.
We take as long as you need to review information and make decisions to proceed or not at each step of the process, as we believe that time spent at this stage of the planning is well spent and saves possible confusion or misunderstandings later on.
Meeting 1
We meet by phone to discuss your project at a high level. During that meeting a decision is made to move forward or not. If so, we then agree to a suitable time and location for a face-to face meeting. to discuss your new home in more detail, escpecially what your desired construction budget expectations are.
Meeting 2
We meet face to face to discuss your project, We review documentation which you may have prepared in advance, such as concept plans. Attention is given to the site constraints, town planning rules and your new home style, size and most importantly, your construction budget. As we did in the first meeting, a decision is made to move forward with developing the concept plan or not. If so, then we ask for a deposit for the time our design team will spend on the work, and agree to the time to meet, generally between one and two weeks later, to review the design.
Meeting 3
We meet up to present and discuss the concept plan. At that meeting a decision is made on whether or not to move forward with the next stage of developing the plans ready for a Building Consent. If not, the concept plans are yours to keep, but if so, we ask for the remainder of the payment for the concept plan and a deposit for the time our design team will spend on creating the working plans, perhaps liaising with a structural engineer, etc. We agree to meet again, generally between two and three weeks later to review the working plans prior to sending them to the council for processing. We also present an estimate of the material costs and construction costs for you to consider. A final meeting to review the project and make a decision on moving forward to construction is scheduled for a convenient time, generally a week after Meeting 3.
Meeting 4
We meet up one final time to discuss the pricing estimate and if all is agreed, we ask for the remainder of the fees for the working plans and for you to look over our contract for building. The process of determining the final price for construction is then poised to begin, and we ask for the deposit to enable us to proceed with this work. At this meeting, we then confirm all materials to be used on your new home and have you sign the working drawings off as complete. Once the final price is worked out completely, we arrange one final meeting to sign the contract for construction and receive the first stage site administration payment to us, thereby enabling us to book the resources required for the work.
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