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.
You bring the need, not the design
You do not need drawings, a budget, or a site to start. You need a plain statement of what your organization has to do that it cannot do today. Say who will use the building, how many of them, and when.
Bring what you know about the money, even if it is rough. A bond amount, a grant you are pursuing, a campaign goal. The report tests the building against that number, not an ideal one.
Decide who signs off before the work starts. Name the person who approves each stage, and the board or council members who need to see it. A report moves fastest when the right people approve it on time.
Ask who priced the budget, and whether they will hold it
Some early studies end with a cost per square foot borrowed from past projects. That number means little until the program and site are settled. When design and cost sit in separate contracts, the real price shows up after the design is done. That is usually why building projects go over budget.
So before you hire anyone to plan your building, ask three things. What is the estimate based on? Who priced it? Whose problem is it if bids come in high? A good team answers in writing. The questions to ask before you hire a design team covers the rest.
In a Design Framework Report, the budget is priced by a team that also builds. It is tested against your program and your site, with contingency and escalation applied. You are not approving a placeholder that someone else reprices later.
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.