Some may think the golden rule of building projects is ‘If you have the gold you can build’ but gold is only one of the three factors that shape your building project – time, cost and quality. Finding the right balance between factors determines the scope of your building project. Time, cost and quality pull and push against each other. For example, increase budget and time and you can slow down and afford more hand-crafted quality. Decrease your available time and you may have to pay more to get the job done quicker and risk mistakes and poor quality. However, increase the scope of the building project and you will push out all time, cost and quality. Not every building project is the same.
Get to understand how your project scope is surrounded by time, cost and quality. Talk to your designer or builder on how a possible change to the construction period or scope can affect the quality or outcome of the project. Some changes will have effect where other changes came do the opposite. Is the reason the estimate is high and the time for construction long is the project scope has swelled to be too large?