Design build or bid build. A real fork, argued honestly.
You have to choose this before you can hire anybody, and every page you will read about it was written by a company that sells one of the two. So was this one. We sell design build, and the row below that says what design build is worse at has not been softened.
Design build
One agreement. The architect draws and the builder prices continuously alongside, so the house is costed while it is still lines on paper. You are hiring a team that has worked together before, and you are giving up the ability to make them compete on price.
Bid build
Two agreements. You engage an architect, get a complete permit set drawn, then send it to three or four builders and take a number. You get genuine price competition on identical drawings, and you carry the risk that all four numbers come back above what you can spend.
| The question | Design build | Bid build |
|---|---|---|
| Who draws the house | The architect, with the builder in the room from the first sketch | The architect alone, then the finished drawings go out to bid |
| When you learn the price | At the sketch, and three more times as the house is drawn | After the drawings are done, which is usually month six or seven |
| How the price is set | One company, open book, negotiated | Three or four builders bidding the same set competitively |
| When it comes in high | The house is adjusted while adjusting it is still cheap | The house is redrawn, which costs two to five months and a second design fee |
| Who owns a conflict in the drawings | One company, and it is not your problem | Two companies, and you are standing between them |
| What it is genuinely worse at | You are not price shopping the construction, and one company holds both the drawing and the number | You price a house nobody has priced before, so the first real number arrives after the design money is spent |
| Who it suits | A buyer who values the schedule and a single accountable party | A buyer with time, a strong architect, and an appetite for managing two contracts |
What we are worse at.
You are not getting competitive pricing on the construction, and you are trusting one company with both the drawing and the number.
That is a real cost and we are not going to argue it away. If you want four sealed envelopes on a table, design build cannot give you that, and you should go and get them.
Here is why we build this way anyway. A house priced after it is drawn gets priced once and drawn twice. The first number comes back high, the drawings go back to the architect, three months disappear, a second design fee is paid, and the house that comes out the other side is the house you could afford rather than the house you wanted. We have watched it happen to families who came to us afterwards, and the six months it costs them are worth more than the five percent competition would have saved.
A house priced while it is drawn gets priced four times and drawn once. That is the whole argument, and it is a schedule argument rather than a money argument.
If you choose bid build, do three things: pay the architect for a real specification and not a drawing set alone, insist every bidder prices the same exclusions page, and give the builders four weeks rather than two. A bid taken in two weeks is a guess wearing a suit.
Three questions about how you hire.
Can I get competitive pricing inside design build?
On the trades, yes, and you should ask for it in writing. We bid every major subcontract to at least three companies and the book is open to you: you see the bids, you see which one we took, and you see why when we did not take the cheapest. What you cannot competitively price is us. That is the honest limit of the arrangement.
What do architects think of building this way?
The good ones like it, because the alternative is watching a set they spent seven months on get value engineered by somebody who was in none of the conversations. Halsey Ward and Fonseca Studio both work with us this way and both also take bid build work. Ask them. We will give you their numbers before you hire us rather than after.
Can I start with bid build and switch?
Yes, and about one in six of our clients arrives that way, usually holding a finished drawing set and three numbers they did not expect. We will price that set as it stands and tell you which parts of it are driving the number. Sometimes the answer is that the house is fine and the budget was optimistic. Sometimes it is a roof with eleven planes on it.