A couple come in wanting a two storey side extension, a new kitchen, structural changes and a glazed rear elevation. Their budget is a number they arrived at by thinking about their savings.
Everybody in the room except them knows it is not enough. Nobody says so, and four months later a great deal of everyone's time has been spent on a scheme that will never be built.
Why the conversation gets postponed
It feels commercially risky and slightly rude. Practices worry that raising money early looks mercenary, and that an honest figure will send the client elsewhere. Both fears are wrong.
What postponing it actually costs
Design fees spent on an unbuildable scheme, a client who feels misled when tenders arrive, a damaged relationship and a practice that has worked for months on something that stops.
Why clients have unrealistic figures
They have no reference point. Construction is not something people buy repeatedly, published figures vary wildly, and a neighbour's project from four years ago is the most common benchmark.
Ask the question in the first conversation
Not apologetically. What figure are you working to, and what does that include. It is a professional question and clients respect being asked it directly.
Ask what the figure includes
Construction only, or fees, surveys, planning costs, contingency, fittings and furniture. Clients almost always state a total that is really a construction number, or the reverse.
Publish indicative cost ranges
By project type, per square metre, with the caveats. Clients will find figures somewhere, and they are better off finding yours with an explanation attached.
Explain what moves the number
Specification, glazing, structural work, ground conditions, access, services and how much of the existing building is disturbed. Clients can then see why a range exists.
Explain the fee relationship
That fees are usually a proportion of construction cost, and what that means for their figure, which is the ground in fee stages and what each RIBA stage actually delivers.
Explain the contingency
Why it exists, what proportion is sensible and that a project without one is a project with a problem waiting. Clients who plan for it are never shocked by it.
Offer to design to the budget
Rather than designing the brief and discovering the cost. It is a different way of working and it is what most clients actually want.
Say plainly when it will not work
With what the budget would achieve instead. Clients respect honesty far more than a scheme that collapses at tender, and many increase their budget once they trust the source.
Recommend a cost consultant where appropriate
And be clear about what a practice can and cannot indicate. It protects the client and the practice.
Qualify at the enquiry stage
Budget, timescale, site and brief before any meeting, which is the discipline in project enquiries architects should qualify early and budget questions homeowners ask builders first.
Revisit the number at every stage
A budget agreed at the outset drifts as the brief grows, usually one reasonable addition at a time. Checking it explicitly at each stage, and showing what has changed since the last conversation, means a client sees the cost of their own decisions while there is still time to make different ones.
Know what an enquiry costs you
Time spent on unqualified enquiries is measurable, as in the cost per conversation metric explained.
Getting started
Publish indicative ranges and what moves them, ask the budget question in the first exchange, and capture it at any hour. SpideyChat for architects answers from your published pages, plans are on the pricing page, and the chatbot ROI calculator works through the numbers.