When looking to design & construct your dream home or custom townhouse project there are two processes that you can choose to progress with. The decision to either (1) Design and Construct or (2) Design and Tender can have a significant impact on whether your dream home or project is achievable and more importantly, within your budget.
Design and Construct and Design and Tender both have their own pros and cons, but in our years of experience as home building specialists, one always comes out on top when it comes to delivering projects of the highest quality.
With Design and Tender, when you seek an architect, you will usually have your dream home in mind, and you will portray this to the architect who will produce exactly what you’re asking for. However, architects don’t know how much the dream home or project they are drawing will cost to build, and so when you seek a builder with these drawings, you may find that you cannot necessarily afford to build that particular home, which essentially leads to your disappointment.
When you choose to Design and Construct, you choose to have the building company involved in the design process in conjunction with your ideas, but also keeping your budget in mind. The main benefit of this is that the builder is already on your side and you have an accurately estimated, much more achievable, cost.
As Design and Construct specialists, often when we design a project in conjunction with our clients, the documents with our specialist contractors are much better coordinated, which means the whole process is streamlined from the very beginning. This also means your project will be approved through town planning faster, allowing a hassle-free and positive building application and construction process.
Design and Construct doesn’t just make it easier for you; the whole process is preferred by subcontractors too as the plans are well documented to allow a seamless build process of the highest quality.
In a recent poll we conducted on Instagram, based on 112 subcontractors, 70% preferred to deal with a Design and Construct builders, rather than a Design and Tender builder. This is because the builder has more than likely built a great relationship with the engineer and architect before construction begins. A relationship built on skill and trust means the likelihood of any issues coming up is very low, and if any issues do arise, they can be quickly resolved on site.
With Design and Tender, the builder does not know the architect, engineer and other consultants, and from our experience it can make the process extremely slow, long and quite often painful.
We had a past client, who went down the route of Design and Tender, and ended up paying much more money than they anticipated. In fact, they’d paid $100,000 in design fees before they had even got halfway through documentation with the architect or engaged a builder. An absolute horror story which we want all of our clients to avoid by working with us from the beginning.
When they came to us, it took almost 9 months for the building permit to be approved due to the poor quality of the architectural drawings. As the documents materialised further, an additional $90,000 was needed to finalise the building permit in case unforeseen and undocumented civil works were required. The lesson out of this is that if you want to go down the route of Design and Tender, you must choose your architect and engineer wisely.
Over the years, we have done the hard work for you by trialling consultants and are now extremely happy with a core group of specialists who deliver clear, well-coordinated documents, plans and specifications. We can rely on them to produce quality products and services, on time and on budget.
Design and Construct eliminates the likelihood of variations, speeds the whole process up and generally makes for a much more enjoyable, less stressful experience, to get you that dream home or townhouse project that you deserve.
If you have a custom home or townhouse project you want to build, please don’t hesitate to contact Dominate Building today!
