Transparency, and what it costs

You have a login, and you can see your own project.

At the end of every day, someone on site walks the job on video, and that walkthrough becomes a daily log you receive. If our own people are not there that day, whoever is walks it — even the plumber. You are not waiting for a phone call to find out what happened.

A lump sum forces a contractor to build in a cushion. Then one of three things happens: corners get cut to hit the number, change orders pile up, or the number was padded enough in advance that the contractor is safe no matter what goes wrong.

Cost-plus removes the cushion, and with it the incentive to compromise quality to protect a margin. Estimates are built from actual comps on previous jobs. Once you move forward, we can share redacted quotes and reconciliations from comparable past work, so you can see where the numbers came from. The management fee is agreed per project.

It sounds rough that whatever it costs, it costs. But it is in your interest, because nobody is cutting quality to hit a number.

Cost-plus only works if you trust the numbers. Daily visibility is what earns that trust. The two are one arrangement, not two.

Most contractors quote the job, not the move-in. They exclude windows, wood floor, carpet, door hardware, light fixtures, vanities, toilets, window shades, closets, and furniture. Most do not tell you they are excluding them. They just give you a price.

So you think you are moving in. The beds arrive. You go to hang up your pants and there is nothing in the closet. You go to turn on the lights and there is no fixture. The contractor tells you that you did not buy a light fixture — buy one, and we will happily install it. Then you find out you need a custom closet guy.

We tell you what to budget for baseline presentable quality across the entire project. You can still choose a pressed-wood vanity or a $3,500 custom one. But you know the real number before you start.

Most clients have not heard the term, on either the residential or the commercial side. It means understanding what you are actually trying to achieve — the finished product, the functionality, the aesthetic you have in mind — and then finding a less expensive path there without compromising quality or the vision.

An architect specifies a custom staircase window, an inch larger per unit, chosen for how it reads inside and out. Three stock windows achieve the identical effect for less. The same logic repeats in the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, the office, the retail space, the restaurant.

We apply it on effectively every project, significantly, across every aspect of the work.