The most expensive decisions on a building project get made first, when you know the least. You commit to a size, a site, and a number long before there are drawings good enough to test any of them. The Design Framework Report closes that gap.
What you actually get
Three things. Drawings of what the building will look like, good enough to put in front of a board or a funder. A real budget, with contingency and escalation applied. And a timeline. Everything else in the report exists to support those three.
The five stages
The Design Framework Report pulls the early work that is usually scattered across disconnected consultants into one deliverable:
- Programming. What the building has to do. You get a list of every space and how big it needs to be.
- Planning. The site, the zoning, and how people get in and out. You get site and floor plans.
- Concept design. The shape of the building. You get 3D renderings you can show anyone.
- Budgeting. Cost with contingency and escalation applied. You get a real number, not a guess.
- Scheduling. The order the work happens in. You get a timeline and a recommendation on how to build.
It is not a marketing brochure. It is a document you can take to a board, a lender, or a city and get a decision out of.
Early planning is where projects are won or lost
By the time full construction documents exist, most of a project's cost is already locked in. If the program is wrong, the site is a poor fit, or the budget was optimistic, those problems surface during design or construction. That is the worst time to find them and the most expensive time to fix them.
It is also how you get funded
Funders do not commit to ideas. A board, a lender, a foundation, or a council needs a number, a schedule, and something to look at. That is exactly what the report produces, which is why several of our clients use it to close the campaign that pays for construction. Our Birth Detroit work started this way.
Stopping is a real answer
Plenty of owners take the report to their board and come back a year later once the money is committed. Some learn the building they imagined costs twice what they can raise. Both are good outcomes. Both cost a fraction of what the same discovery costs after design is underway.
The on-ramp to a guaranteed price
Because the report settles program, budget, and schedule with real discipline, it is also the first phase of FrameworkBuild, where one team designs the building, builds it, and holds the price. You cannot honestly cap a price on a project nobody has defined yet. That is why every engagement starts here.