After going back and forth with Ustream we solidified a solid direction for their Los Angeles commercial space plan (please see the revised plan below). The next step was putting together a budget for the construction and furniture items. We had to give Ustream an estimate of what it would cost to remodel their office, so we contacted our preferred contractor, O.C.G.C, and furniture dealer, Precision Office Installers (http://www.precisionco.com), to obtain preliminary pricing. It is always good to give the contractor and furniture dealer a deadline to complete the pricing, as the project is pretty much on hold until this is complete. Usually the strategy would be to permit the drawings at the same time as obtaining pricing but in this case the project required no permit so we requested pricing within the week.
Commercial Space Plan
Construction Pricing
We used our Construction Bulletin Form to tell the contractor specifically what construction items were to be priced. This form was formatted so all items were broken out as separate line items. Breaking out the pricing was very beneficial when Ustream wanted to eliminate certain items from the project. With this form and the current space plan the contractor had everything they needed to start the pricing.
Construction Bulletin Form
Furniture Pricing
We used our Furniture Pricing Form to keep track of all the pricing for the office furniture items. Redesign sent this form along with the specific furniture specification sheets, that contained all of the furniture information, to Precision Office Installers for pricing.
Pricing budgets can appear very overwhelming. It is very important to make it as easy as possible for the client to review the items they are paying for. They should be able to skim through a project budget in 5 minutes. Put yourself in their shoes; not only do you have your full time job to worry about but going through multiple formats of consultant budgets is very painful and time consuming. It gets worse when you have to go back and have the pricing modified! If the designer relies on the contractor and furniture supplier to submit budget forms you can expect to get pricing in a format that you and the client will have a hard time understanding. Redesign’s standard pricing forms for construction and furniture pricing made everything cohesive and easy for Ustream to understand. Once the pricing came back to Redesign, we reviewed, pasted the forms into our overall budget, then updated the client. This entire process made budget approvals seamless and allowed us to meet the project deadline.
Furniture Pricing Form
Furniture Specification Sheet
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