Soft Costs Are Not Fixed. They Are Negotiable.
Architects, engineers, consultants, land use attorneys, civil engineers. On any project with site plan approval or entitlements involved, soft costs can stack up fast. Developers often treat these fees as fixed line items, rates you accept and move on from. Builders do not see it that way.
We work with these professionals constantly. We know who is expensive but slow, who is priced fairly and actually delivers, who responds to emails on a Tuesday and who goes quiet for two weeks at the worst possible moment. That kind of knowledge has real dollar value when you are assembling a project team. A builder who has been around long enough has an opinion on every firm in the market, based on actual experience, not referrals.
Not All Design Professionals Are Created Equal
This is the part nobody talks about openly. There are architects who produce clean, coordinated drawings that a field crew can actually build from. And there are architects who produce drawings that generate more questions than answers, where every week in the field brings another RFI, another clarification, another delay while someone figures out what was actually meant.
There are engineers whose details are tight and whose specs are current. And there are engineers who recycle old details, miss coordination issues, and show up to meetings unprepared. There are land use attorneys who know how to move an approval through a municipality and ones who let files sit.
Builders know the difference because we live with the consequences. We are the ones in the field when the drawings do not add up. We are the ones managing the schedule when a consultant is three weeks behind on a response. When a builder helps select the design team, you are getting a filter that no amount of Google searching or referral calls can replicate.
Change Orders Start in the Design Phase
Some design professionals are change order happy. It is a business model. Fees look reasonable at the start, and then the extras accumulate: additional meetings, revised submissions, scope additions that probably should have been included. An experienced builder has seen which firms operate this way and which ones stand behind their scope.
The same dynamic plays out in construction, but it starts in design. Incomplete drawings, unresolved coordination between trades, and vague specifications are the seeds of construction change orders. Getting a builder involved during design is one of the most effective ways to reduce them, because the builder is the one who will eventually have to price and manage whatever the documents say.
Expectation Management Is a Builder's Job Too
When CBG is involved early, we can do something that no one else on the team is positioned to do: tell you, before money is spent, what is realistic. Realistic timelines. Realistic costs based on what is actually being designed, not a number from three years ago on a different project type. Realistic feedback on whether the team being assembled can actually deliver what is being promised.
Most project problems are not surprises to an experienced builder. They are predictable. The site condition that should have been caught in due diligence. The design professional whose scope of work had a gap that nobody closed. The approval timeline that was always going to take longer than anyone admitted. Early involvement means those conversations happen when you can still do something about them.
If you are at the beginning of a project and have not yet assembled your team, that is exactly the right moment to bring CBG into the conversation. We work with developers, investors, and owners across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The earlier we are involved, the more value we can add.
