Dollars and Sense

One of the most important factors in every project, at any stage of its development or completion, is the question of dollars and cents. Of course it is! This is business after all, right? And while it is a necessary part of business, at first glance it might seem to be off to the side of Optimum's central focus of building better relationships, or even that it might be something that gets in the way of that aim. Just think, how many times have dollars and cents been the cause of bad relationships, and sour endings? Lots! If that is the case, the way we work with money must be more closely tied to our heartbeat than you'd think and therefore we'd better keep our eye on it.

Questions of dollars and cents come up at every step of a job, from the moment a client has a dream or a desire to build something to the final punch list and hand off. At each stage there is an intersection between what we want to do and what it takes to get it done. Most business models see this as a zero sum game where the client tries to get the most for the least money and the business tries to get the most money for the least effort/time. At Optimum, we think about it a bit differently. We are a team of really skilled, highly motivated people, who go the extra mile for others and who love working with people who have a high quality vision, understand what it is worth, and are happy to pay for it. Of course this requires a commitment from everyone on our team to people and quality, over profits. Sometimes it costs everyone a bit more, but we believe the rewards are worth it, in relationships and results.

To create an environment where we all win together, where our client receives a finished product that is dura-beautiful and where our team makes a respectable living doing so, it's all about building trust between our clients and us. If we're all on the same page and everybody can trust that no one is trying to screw anybody else over, the budget numbers are no longer the secret bargaining chips we're fighting over but rather the language of, “What we can get done together?”

Turning trust into numbers

To build this trust, you need straight talk, and to talk straight you have to have the facts down pat. That's where our team of estimators comes in. They're the ones that, at every stage of the project, are translating the situation into the language of dollars and cents. The first question any client asks themselves is, of course, what can I do with what I've got. If our estimators get as little as a 1 page architect's concept drawing, they can start putting together an initial answer to that question. 

What does it take? 

Well, a lot of context to pull from and, you guessed it, a lot of good working relationships.When it comes to context, nothing can substitute for hundreds of projects coming across your desk. That's exactly what we found in Don Stark, one of our "new" guys. It is fun to pick on the new guy when he could be the father of most of the rest of the team. We do it in good fun because with his age he brought more skill and context than many of us put together and he has added a lot of practical straightforward wisdom to the team.

He likes to brag that his graduating class at Iowa State Class of 1979 was the last one to use slide rules. Most of our younger guys had to google "what's a slide rule?" to understand what he was talking about. In many industries these days, gray hair means "out of touch," but what is being forgotten is that having worked through the changes in technology throughout the past 40 years, he knows better than most what is enduring and what is most important. Sure, not having to put together take offs (the list of supplies needed for a project) one measurement at a time from a ream of paper architectural renderings is nice and we can do things more quickly. But what hasn't changed, and what really takes years of doing to get good at, is inferring costs from limited drawings, keeping in constant touch with the subcontractors and suppliers, and quickly wrapping your head around a concept and a dream so that a coherent and reliable estimate can be put together for both the management and the clients to work with. The estimator stands in a unique and essential place in the middle of the project and has to be really well integrated with everyone around. This means some serious relational acumen and awareness is needed, even if most of his day is spent with his head in the numbers. One key point here, taking it back to trust, is that if we are all pushing in the same direction, client and general contractor, the estimator can actually be a huge resource. That's because every project could have a wide range of final prices, depending on what the client prioritizes and wants. Every material and structural element choice can change the cost dramatically and there are lots of creative ways to save and spend money. 

Now this could be a place where the estimator can be party to a construction contractor’s scheme of hiding and cheating his way to a bigger profits, so we see it differently, as a place of real creativity where the estimator can be on everybody's side, thoughtfully working within the given limitations of the dream and the resources of the client. He has to come up with satisfying solutions. Don and the rest of the estimating team are the ones that see all the variables: the costs of materials, subcontractors, profit margins, overhead but also the wishes and dreams of the client. 

So, if we start with a commitment to better relationships and first build that essential trust, and if we all share a desire for dura-beautiful work and a straight talking relational approach, it is not only amazing what we can accomplish together, but a fun process that everybody wins from. The dollars and cents are just another part of the language we use to do that work together. So let's hear it for the mighty estimator and for the part they play in bringing people together, making sense of dollars and cents, and helping to make ideas become real!