Conceptual Site Planning

In this phase, our focus is contextual: where the building will be located on the site, how you will access the site and how the building will relate to the neighboring buildings. It’s important that the building belongs to the neighborhood and this begins with the site planning.

Zoning & Use Evaluation

This is a crucial step: we need to understand what zoning restrictions the municipality has for the site, which will directly impact the size, height, and location of the building.  There may be variances required in order to achieve the best design for the site and it is important to understand what the feasibility of obtaining those variances will be ahead of time and before we begin designing the building.

Project Budgeting

Now that we are understanding the scope and feasibility of the project, we can prepare a budget for the project.  We prepare a full budget that takes into consideration all soft and hard costs.  We will determine which outside professionals will be required to help you receive your approvals for the project, and therefore can account for the soft costs including financing costs.  To determine the hard costs, we will need to work with you to understand the types of materials that you envision using to achieve the look and feel of your building. Once we have a good understanding of that we can develop the hard costs.  Depending upon the complexity of the project we may employ our professional estimator to assist us. For a project to be successful it is paramount that a realistic budget is prepared from the outset.