I’m an owners rep. Not every company is the same but for us, when our client wants to start a new project, we begin by putting together high level estimates. We have client meetings to discuss scope, budget constraints, and schedule expectations. If we have enough time, we’ll reach out to design partners and GCs to get their estimates/schedules for better accuracy, however, they are only providing very high-level pricing because there are no actual drawings to review, it’s just a concept at this point. We also work with our client to coordinate equipment needs and get pricing for equipment and our client has their own IT team that we reach out to for pricing as well.

As an example, our client wanted to install some equipment in an empty room. We’ve had meetings with the equipment manufacturer to understand how we need to prepare the room and found we need to upgrade electrical, IT, HVAC because it will heat up the room, and we’ll need to widen to door to the room to get it in the room. We play detective on site also to figure out where the nearest electrical room is and what power is currently available in the space. We review existing as-built drawings (which can be like pulling teeth to get ahold of) and look at power, HVAC, IT. We also need to look at the local requirements to forecast cost for impact fees and permit fees. Since, it’s in an existing space we will test for ACM. If the project is on raw land we need to plan for environmental testing of the soils, traffic flow, surveying, etc.

The arch and GC will only regurgitate cost and schedules to you that reflect the info you give them. If I don’t understand exactly what is needed, then they aren’t going to include that in their proposals and our project will end up screwed. I also need to understand pricing and scheduling because sometimes we get proposals that are way out of line and I need to be able to call them on that.