Articles
Notes from the job site
What we have learned running renovations, build-outs and furniture installs: costs, schedules, contracts and the details that decide opening day.
Fourth-quarter planning: getting next year's build ready to start
Every December we get the same call from an owner whose board just approved a project for the coming year, and the question is always whether it can start in t…
Read the article →Planning a Texas construction schedule around winter freeze delays
The forecast said a low of twenty-six for two nights, and the pour scheduled for that Thursday moved to the following Monday. Nobody on the site was surprised…
Read the article →Five ways to pull a construction finish date forward
A hotel owner once told us the soft opening had moved up six weeks because the brand's marketing calendar had moved. The drawings had not changed. The building…
Read the article →Getting your business ready before construction starts
The day the dumpster arrives is a bad day to find out the point-of-sale system runs through a closet on the demolition plan. We have watched it happen. The bui…
Read the article →Six early warnings that a construction schedule is slipping
A missed opening date is never the first sign of a schedule problem. It is the last one. By the time the date moves on paper, the job has usually been drifting…
Read the article →How a tight labor market moves your construction schedule
The electrician who told us he could start on the fourth called on the second to say the seventh, and the seventh became the fourteenth. Nothing was wrong with…
Read the article →Where material cost swings actually hit a construction budget
The lumber quote we priced a framing package on in the spring was not the lumber quote we bought at in the fall. The difference on that one order was larger th…
Read the article →What a gym or fitness studio build-out costs: the real drivers
The landlord's slab was fine for the retail tenant who left. It was not fine for a platform where members would drop three hundred pounds from shoulder height…
Read the article →Dealership showroom renovation costs: what sets the number
A general manager called with a single number in mind before she had sent us a single drawing. She wanted to know what her renovation would run per square foot…
Read the article →What a self-storage office build-out costs
Two self-storage properties can sit on the same road and rent to the same neighborhood, and the leasing office at one can cost twice what the other did to buil…
Read the article →Church renovation costs in Texas: sanctuary to classrooms
A building committee handed us a single number from another congregation's project last year and asked whether their renovation would land near it. It would no…
Read the article →Hotel PIP renovations: how brand compliance shapes the job
A hotel owner opened a PIP on the hood of a truck in our parking lot and pointed at the completion date on the last page. That date, set by the brand, was the…
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