The complex and competitive nature of inner city building in Calgary requires timely solutions and significant experience to navigate the project landscape, from land acquisition through to design, engineering, permitting, contractor selection, budget and quality oversight. The services I can provide are focused precisely on what will make your project successful and to avoid costly errors or lost time. While working with me you will be defended against many of the frustrating, or even heartbreaking moments of failure I have experienced in my own projects, where I learned on my dime, not yours, how to overcome problems. From this deeply personalized perspective on my countless job site wins and losses I can drastically reduce the risk you face to build a custom home in Calgary.
There are myriad of challenge I tackle on a daily basis risking my own funds. For example, you may have hired an excellent architecture firm, but its responsibility excludes how marketable the creative work will be upon completion or how hard the design work is to execute, and you find out you cannot afford to build what is in front of you. Maybe you need a reliable subcontractor, do your options just consist of google searches, browsing the better business bureau to find a trusted company, or checking Kijiji? Does your townhouse project require a civil engineer, but after reviewing the first draft of the plan you commissioned you have little way to gauge whether the details are appropriate, or even possible to execute on site and for what cost? How can you estimate what the total cost of project permits will accumulate to for a small building in 2022-23 without prior knowledge of the fee structure? Unfortunately the City does not provide an instruction manual that would begin to replace the value of recent experience in building a similar scope project as what you intend to do.
I am always either planning, building or selling my houses, and I must have the key components in place before I begin to reduce my risk. This means I need to know about new rules, costly new city policy changes, and market prices for material and labour before I buy land. As the process of building inner city has become increasingly complex, and multi-disciplinary, it has become far more risky, especially for multi family sites. Those professionals needed during the pre-construction phase are 'silo' bound based on their speciality, when they need to be vetted and organized by a big picture manager with responsibility to get work actually done on time and for a viable price. If you believe you could benefit from some project planning assistance, feel free to browse the type of services below that I can offer and contact me for a complementary discussion where I can propose some real solutions to obstacles in the way of your project success. Here is one final piece of construction wisdom I gained back in 2005 when I was desperately ill equipped and untrained to build houses, but was building one anyway, and encountered some demoralizing hurdle:
“Construction is like winning a war. You can lose a few battles.”
Pre-development permit project analysis - Impartial review of concept plans for layout functionality and attractiveness to the buyer demographic
Structural and Civil Engineering management - scope of work, cost evaluation, advice on the cost to execute the details required by the City and Engineer (or perhaps some of those details are not even needed?).
Inspections - how to react to permit conditions, overcoming misinterpreted site calls made by the building inspector (this is perhaps one of the most awful experiences a builder can face - ask me how I know), ensuring documents are prepared in advance of fines being levied.
Framing Check - the type of workmanship that must be complete prior to covering with drywall. This is the type of inspection that the framing inspector will not do as they solely focus on code related structural requirements, but the builder has far more subtle issues to contend with.
Schedule Preparation - How to organize a site workflow, in order, such that efficient site work can be managed and costly mistakes avoided.
Organization of exterior material schedule - assistance with narrowing down a vast supply of design choices to a final cohesive palette.
Multi family project economic analysis - this is the work that likely could be done by the design shop, but they don't build houses, or sell houses, so they just do not get exposed to the risks or benefit from the experience of the builder.
Land deal analysis - how many houses has the listing realtor built? So why do they claim expertise in forecasting development potential? Are you about to commit to a costly land deal and are unsure of the implications of the dimensions and zoning? Is there an ENMAX nightmare in the alley or a sewer infrastructure dilemma hidden in the street? Time to call the 'lot doctor'.
Exterior rendering and marketing assistance - Do you need to send a design to a foreign country for rendering work? This could be a lot more challenging to manage than you would guess.
Land use re-designation - unlike most practitioners in this field, I will break it down and give you my best numerical estimate on likelihood of success for your rezoning application. We can get into individual councillor voting behaviour and track record if needed.
Asbestos and Demolition - advice or turn key permits in your hand ready for demolition, or I can even deliver to you your cleared site ready for survey stakeout and excavation.
Cost Saving Techniques - how to navigate new rules or changes to avoid 'planning in' unwanted cost that offers limited benefit to clients at great expense to the builder. My clients can share in any construction secrets or valuable shortcuts I've encountered over the past few years.
Interior Design Review - How can a home builder without formal decoration training impact your project? By analyzing the design work and decor choices to determine if the cost of the finishing package is disproportionate to the the value of the completed home, minor adjustments can be made to enhance margins.