The first attempt to understand what the project actually costs.
You have read the stories, or you know somebody it happened to. The renovation that landed thirty per cent over. The couple who paid for two full designs and built neither. It is the reason people arrive at a first meeting with a figure that is slightly vague, slightly low, and offered as a question rather than a fact.
I understand the instinct. Naming a ceiling feels like authorising it. There is a suspicion, not entirely unearned, that a design expands to fill whatever number it is given, and that the safe play is to hold something back and see what comes.
The trouble is that the withheld number does not stay withheld. It turns up at tender as the gap between what has been drawn and what you can pay for, and by then the decisions that drove the cost are set — where the structure goes, whether you raised, how many wet areas moved. A budget said out loud in week two is a constraint the design can work inside. The same budget discovered in month eight is a demolition.
If your budget and your ambitions are far apart, the useful advice is often to wait. I will say so.
Nobody is trying to spend the whole budget. Knowing the ceiling is what allows the design to be shaped to fit it, and it is the difference between a project that proceeds and one that gets redesigned twice and then abandoned. On smaller projects the fixed costs make up a larger share — which is why modest jobs feel expensive to design.
The wince, then the relief. This is the conversation clients most dread and most value afterwards. Getting through it honestly early establishes a kind of candour that carries the rest of the project.
The budget stays notional, and everyone privately assumes a different number. It becomes real when the tender comes in, at which point the design has to be cut — losing the parts that made it worth doing, because the expensive structural decisions were made first.
This is a set piece, not an awkward aside. We sit down with the real number — including the one you would rather not say out loud — and test it against what the project actually costs to build in Brisbane this year. Nobody is trying to spend the whole budget. Knowing the ceiling is what lets the design be shaped to fit it. It is also the moment where my being independent of the builder is most obviously worth something.
Give them the true maximum, stated as the total project cost rather than the build cost, and put it in writing at the start. Then ask for cost checking to be part of the process rather than an event at the end: an order-of-cost figure against each concept option, a builder's or quantity surveyor's opinion before design development begins, and an agreed point at which the design is tested against the number. An architect who resists costing at concept stage is worth a hard question.
Guidance generally runs from 10 to 20 per cent, and on an old Brisbane timber house I would sit at the upper end. Stumps, termites, rot, asbestos, undersized framing and previous unapproved work all appear once walls open. Keep it separate from an allowance for upgrades. Contingency is for what the house does to you, not for the tapware you decide you want. And remember it sits on top of consultants, council and certifier fees, finance costs, landscaping and furniture, which together are the total project cost the Institute's agreement asks you to budget for.
Usually three things at once. The budget was never tested against the design, so the drawing was aimed at a number nobody had verified. The documentation was thin, so the builder either priced uncertainty as risk or priced it low and recovered it in variations. And things were changed after the price was set. The thirty per cent figure is forum lore rather than data, but it is close to what happens on an under-documented job with an open-ended contract. It is far less common where the drawings are complete and the contract price is fixed.
Yes, and say it as a ceiling rather than a target. The useful sentence is the uncomfortable one: here is the number above which we stop, and here is what has been allowed for contingency and fees inside it. If you are worried it will simply be spent, say that as well. It is a reasonable worry and a fair thing to hold an architect to. What does not help is a number you already know is fiction, because every hour of design after that is aimed at the wrong house.
You have more options than people assume and they are not equally painful. Value-manage the finishes and services, which is cheap. Reduce scope at the edges, deferring the deck, the landscaping or the second bathroom, which is moderately cheap. Stage the work so the structure and approvals are done once and the fit-out follows later. Retender, or negotiate. Or stop. The expensive move is redesigning the structural decisions, which is precisely why they get tested first. Decide now, while it is hypothetical, which of those you would accept.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.