Grousing about estimates and development
I’m watching an episode of Opening Soon: By Design on Fine Living and a mother/daughter team is building out a new facility for their day spa. The mother was on camera making a statement about her contractors that rubbed me wrong:
“Nobody really came up with an elapsed time estimate or a total budget estimate. It’s all kind of like a Catch 22… Can’t give you an estimate until I have all the design and all the specs, well, you do all the design and all the specs you’ve already expended a significant amount of money.”
To be glib for a moment, I have to say “Well, DUHHH!” Without fully determining the scope of the project through discovery meetings, comps, and other preliminary research that in turn determines the final solution, you’re not going to have an accurate estimate of budget or time. It may be expensive, but would you rather fly blind through the project in the hope that the darkened path you fly through just so happens to be the shortest, best, and cheapest?
These ladies obviously want this project done well. Doing things right with complete thought put in throughout is essential, and it’s definitely not free. Any client with a daunting project who insists that the process of development should be free is not one that you want to deal with.
An old saying goes, “You can have it cheap, fast, or good. Pick two.”
Budgets are a fact of life. Both sides of the coin need to recognize and respect that. However, the soft cost of development in order to attain the concrete constraints of time and cost (and to be able to have a solid plan for adhering to both) are essential for any substantial project worth doing.