The Buzzkill-
“Are you telling me, that our budget cannot cover the entire project wish-list?” Bob (a customer) asked recently.
Possible solution-
“That’s correct”, I replied, “But one option may be to plan to do it in rational phases”.
“Go on” said Bob.
“If we plan the job so that the work that you can afford now won’t interfere with what we are planning later, we can tackle this”
The point being, we know “needs” often exceeds resources available. The strategy is to analyze and balance the work in a manner that selectively allows the work to continue in a phased-manner that does minimal disruption to earlier work and to bundle certain activities for economic, utility and construction benefit.
We have a customer in Scarsdale for whom we’ve completed 4 projects in a master-plan manner over 8 years and the final project turned out great. Since available money was usually tied to yearly bonuses and fluctuated greatly, we tailored the project to the funds and the overall objective so we could “bite-off” the right amount. The other benefit to doing a project in phases is that sometimes your objectives change over time and with the passage of time you have the ability to address those priorities.
We often collaborate with builders to make sure that our assumptions are “real-world” and practical.
However-
The down-side to this phased manner of working, is that there are inherently greater overall costs due to re-mobilization and basic repetitive costs like patching and repainting or redoing site-work, as well as a longer construction periods, which few residential or commercial customers like. Also building permits and approvals can expire if certain precautions and extensions are not heeded and even regulations and codes can change mid-stream. And of course it takes a higher degree of planning and forethought
And also as a reality check –many do not go back for a 2nd phase– so be careful in how much you bite off or not.
Do you have a project that might be slightly beyond your means? Let’s talk! 914 980 5532…ask for Steve
