Because an accurate number takes real hours. Takeoffs, subcontractor pricing, vendor quotes, and a careful read of what the drawings do and do not say. A contractor who is not paid for those hours does them between the jobs that are paying, and you get the version that fits in the gaps, with assumptions buried inside it that surface later as change orders. That is the same dynamic behind why the lowest bid so often costs more.

A Plan Review is paid work with a documented deliverable. You get a written findings report listing what your plans cover, what is only half-drawn, and what decisions are still unassigned. It is yours to keep and use with any contractor you choose, including one that is not us.

Most plan sets we see were finished by capable people who did exactly what they were hired to do. The gap is not skill, it is scope. Design drawings answer what the space will look like. Construction drawings answer what gets built, by whom, and with which specific product. The industry never settled who owns that second half, so it frequently goes unassigned, and nobody notices until a crew is standing in the house making the call. It is the specific problem design-build exists to solve, by putting the design and the price under one roof.

That is what the twelve questions above are testing for. Not whether your designer did good work, but whether anyone was assigned the half that turns a design into a price.

No. The report is yours either way, with no obligation attached to it. We publish the construction-ready standard openly because a homeowner with complete plans gets better pricing from everyone, us included. If you take the findings to another contractor and get a firm number off them, the report did its job.

Then you are in the small group that can skip the Plan Review and go straight to a firm proposal. We will price a construction-ready set without completing it first, because there is nothing left to complete.

That is still a paid engagement rather than something we give away, for the same reason the Plan Review is. Producing a number you can hold us to means real hours of takeoffs and subcontractor pricing, and work done for nothing gets done accordingly. A Firm Proposal is 2% of your projected construction cost, with a $4,000 minimum, and it credits forward into your next step with us if you move ahead.

Every Firm Proposal opens with a plan check. If that check turns up gaps the assessment did not catch, your fee converts to a Plan Review and you move to the completion path, paying only the difference. You never pay twice for the same work.

This assessment is a sample. Twelve questions you answer about your own plans, producing a verdict and a list of the gaps those answers point to. It is fast, it costs nothing, and it is accurate to the degree your answers are.

A Plan Review is the audit. Scott reads your actual drawings against the full construction-ready standard, category by category, and produces a documented findings report. The assessment tells you roughly where you stand. The Plan Review tells you exactly what is missing and what it would take to close it.

All of it is published, so you can do the math before you call. Each fee is a percentage of your projected construction cost, with a minimum that applies on smaller projects, and every one of them credits forward into your next step with us.

A Plan Review is 1%, $2,000 minimum. If your plans need finishing, Plan Completion plus a Firm Proposal is 4%, $8,000 minimum, and your Plan Review fee credits against it. If your plans are already construction-ready, a Firm Proposal on its own is 2%, $4,000 minimum. If nothing is drawn yet and you are starting from a blank page, a Project Development Agreement is 5%, $10,000 minimum. Above $1,000,000 in projected construction cost we quote individually.

None of that is the cost of the remodel itself. For those ranges, see what your remodel will cost.