Great homes begin with everyone at the table

Trevor is an architectural designer and co-director of Arcreate, an award-recognised Auckland studio. He has designed homes alongside Landmark Homes North Shore & Rodney for fourteen years, including the last six homes they have built. Arcreate is one of several architectural partners Landmark works with across Auckland.

His preference is straightforward. He would like to know what a home will cost to build before he draws it in detail.

“I don't want to go and do working drawings for people that then we have to redo because the price has come in too high,” he says. “From our perspective, it's great if they get that price early. You really want to be sure that it's on track.”

Most people assume that once a quantity surveyor or a builder has put a figure on their plans, the figure is settled. Trevor explains why it usually is not.

“We'll have a QS estimate, or a builder estimate at that point,” he says. “But no one's actually committed to doing it for that price. And they won't until they've got full working drawings.”

It is a distinction worth sitting with. An estimate is an informed opinion about what something might cost. A commitment is somebody agreeing to build it for that figure. In the usual sequence the commitment arrives last, after the detailed drawings are finished and the consent application is lodged. That means a significant pre-construction outlay happens while the most important question is still open.

At concept stage, cost is genuinely difficult to see. Trevor is candid about what can reasonably be known at that point.

“Initially all we can go off is what things have costed in the past, and try and relate that to their project, the size of it, the complexity of the site.”

That is the nature of the work rather than a shortcoming. A home is hundreds of decisions about glazing, cladding, drainage, joinery and finishes, and almost all of them look like design decisions rather than financial ones. The cost sits underneath, invisible, until the whole thing is priced.

What changes in a Design and Build process is who is in the room while the design is still moving.

At Landmark, the people sitting alongside the designer and the client bring practical construction and site experience into the conversation. So when someone asks about extra floor area, a change to the roofline, or a different finish through the living spaces, the likely cost implications can be discussed while the design is still moving, rather than arriving as a surprise months later.

Across Landmark's Auckland teams, that practical building knowledge is brought in early. Depending on the franchise and the project, costing may draw on an in-house quantity surveyor or the experience of the people around the table. The structure varies; the principle is the same: design decisions and budget decisions are considered together.

And the answer is often yes.

“Sometimes they'll decide they want to spend the extra money and get really what they want,” Trevor says.

Which is the part people tend to miss. Early costing is not a way of talking clients out of things. It is what lets them spend deliberately, on the details that matter most to them, rather than discovering at the end that the choice was made for them.

Once a concept is developed enough to be costed properly, Landmark costs it, and does so before the detailed drawings begin.

“That's a great thing about Landmark at that stage,” Trevor says. “They can offer a fixed price to people before you carry on with the working drawings.”

The sequencing is what matters. A design deposit takes the project through concept design and the costing stage, with a fixed-price proposal presented before the client commits to building consent documentation and engineering. The exact process can vary by project, but the principle is that the cost of the home is understood and agreed before the most detailed work begins.

In the traditional order, detailed design and consent costs come first and the committed price comes last. With Landmark, clients can reach that point of certainty much earlier and with a considerably smaller pre-construction investment.

For Trevor, that is the whole argument. Not that the traditional route produces worse design, but that it asks a client to invest much more in design work before anyone can confirm whether their home can be built for what they have.

Trevor's work comes almost entirely from referrals, from past clients and from builders. He could send his clients to anyone.

“The main thing is the way they look after the client,” he says. “They know that their reputation is everything. One client leads to another.”

For Landmark North Shore & Rodney clients, there is a practical side too. Interior design and selections are handled in-house, so the details that pull a home together happen in the same conversation rather than being something the client has to arrange elsewhere.

And then there is the thing he mentions almost in passing, which may be the most telling of all.

“It's just nice to have that working relationship, not battling with different egos.”

That, in one line, is the fear most people carry about handing their design to a builder. It is why so many believe they must choose between the two. Trevor's answer is that he has spent fourteen years not choosing, and the homes are better for it.

Designed by someone who listens. Costed by someone who builds. Agreed before anyone starts drawing the details.