Define the project before pricing it

Every number you will ever get for this project, from a contractor's guess on a napkin to a lender's appraisal, is a price for whatever you described. Describe a wish and you get a price for a wish, which is to say a number that will change. This module teaches you to write a project brief: goals, constraints, scope, exclusions, priorities and unknowns, in enough detail that a stranger could price it. It is the most boring hour of the whole course and the one that prevents the most expensive kind of surprise.

1. Why define before pricing Understand

Contractors price uncertainty. When a description is vague, a careful bidder adds money to cover what might be meant, and a careless bidder leaves it out and sends a change order later. Either way you pay for the vagueness; you just pay at different times. Designers work the same way: an architect given a wish list spends your fee discovering what you actually want, and an architect given a brief spends it designing.

A project brief (architects may call it a program) is a short written document, usually two to four pages, that describes what the project is for, what it must respect, what it includes, what it leaves out, what matters most, and what is not yet known. It is written by you, before drawings exist, and it is the document every later document is measured against: the drawings should satisfy it, the proposals should price it, the contract should cover it, and every change should be a visible departure from it.

It is also the document that protects you from yourself. A great deal of scope creep is not a contractor's doing; it is the owner, standing in the opened wall, saying "while we're at it." A brief with a "not now" list gives that impulse somewhere to go other than the budget.

2. Goals versus features

A goal is what the project is for. A feature is one way of achieving it. People write briefs full of features and no goals, which leaves everyone downstream guessing at the reasons and unable to offer a better feature when the first one turns out to be expensive.

Write three to five goals, each as a sentence a stranger would understand. Then list the features you have in mind underneath them, labelled as features. When money gets tight, and it will, the goals tell you which features to defend.

3. Constraints

A constraint is something the project must respect whether you like it or not. Constraints are not wishes and not goals; they are the walls of the room the design has to fit inside. Many briefs forget some of them, and a forgotten constraint is often a redesign later.

• Money. A ceiling (the most you can spend, all-in), its status (tentative or established), and what it includes: design fees, permits, contingency, furniture, the temporary kitchen. Module 6 builds the budget; the brief states the ceiling and what it covers.
• Time. A preferred start, a hoped-for finish, and any hard constraint (a lease ending, a loan commitment expiring, a baby, a school year) with its reason. Write "none" if there is none; it is useful information.
• Site. Lot lines and setbacks (as you understand them; the survey and the building department confirm), access for trucks and dumpsters, storage, slope and drainage, trees you want kept, septic or well, flood zone, easements, utilities and where they enter.
• Rules and reviews. HOA covenants, historic district or design review, condo board approval, rental restrictions. You do not need to know what the rules say yet; you need to know that a review exists, because it can add weeks and sometimes a veto.
• People. Who lives there during the work, children and pets, working-from-home hours, neighbors with shared walls, noise and working-hours limits, a family member who cannot be around dust.
• The existing building. Its age, structure, systems and condition, covered in section 7.

If your setup profile lists constraints, the "Your project" box below will turn them into brief lines. The rule is simple: every constraint gets one sentence, and the sentence says what it affects.

4. Scope, wish list, exclusions and priorities

The wish list

A wish list is everything you would like, in the words you would use to a friend. "A big bright bedroom, a spa bathroom, a walk-in closet, maybe a deck." Write it down; it is the raw material. It is not a scope, and anyone who prices it is guessing.

The scope

A scope describes the work: where it happens, what is built, removed or changed, to what standard, and who supplies what. It is organized by space (room by room) or by trade (demolition, structure, exterior, plumbing, electrical, finishes), and for a residential brief, room by room is easier to write and easier for a contractor to walk through. A scope line looks like this:

Notice what that line does. It locates the work, states sizes where you know them, names every element, gives a finish level or an allowance for things not yet chosen, and says who supplies what. A stranger could price it, and two strangers would be pricing the same thing, even if their prices differ.

Finish levels

"Nice" is not a finish level. Undefined finish levels are one of the most common reasons two proposals for the same drawings differ by tens of thousands of dollars. For every finish you have not selected, write one of three things: a specific product; an allowance (a placeholder dollar amount, with what it covers: material only, or installed, with or without tax and delivery); or a level in plain words a contractor can translate, such as "stock cabinets, painted, soft-close, no custom sizes" or "standard builder-grade interior doors, hollow core, painted." Module 6 explains how to size allowances; the brief's job is to make sure none is missing.

Exclusions

An exclusion is something a reader might assume is included and is not. Exclusions are as important as inclusions because an unmentioned item is unconfirmed, and unconfirmed items have a way of becoming either a surprise cost or an argument. Common ones: appliances; furniture and window coverings; landscaping and repair of the lawn after the excavator leaves; painting outside the work zone; the driveway the dumpster cracks; work you intend to do yourself; items a different contractor will do. Write them as a list with the heading "Not included," and keep the list even if some items move into scope later.

Priorities

Sort every scope item and every feature into four bins:

The "not now" bin is the one people skip and the one that pays. It is where "while we're at it" goes to live until it has a budget of its own.

5. The unknowns register

An unknowns register is a list of the things you cannot yet say about the project, each with a note on how and when it will be resolved. It is not a confession; it is the most useful page in the brief for a designer or a bidder, because it tells them exactly where to be careful and where you have already decided to accept risk.

Some unknowns become allowances (tile). Some become alternates, a separately priced option so the decision can be made with a number in hand (the panel upgrade). Some become verification questions for Module 4 (the HOA). None of them should be invisible.

6. The test: can a stranger price it?

Here is the whole distinction between a wish list and a sufficiently developed scope. Hand the document to a competent contractor who has never met you and never seen the house. Could they, with a site visit, produce a price that would survive the first week of work without a change order for something you "obviously meant"? If not, it is a wish list with ambitions.

The test has seven parts. A brief passes when it answers all seven for every part of the project.

A brief that passes is not a set of drawings and not a specification. Those come later, from professionals, and they will be far more detailed. The brief is the document that helps make those later documents cheaper and more accurate, because the professionals start from your decisions instead of guessing at them.

7. Existing conditions

For any project that touches an existing building, the building itself is the biggest source of unknowns, and the brief should say what you know about it and what you do not. This is documentation, not diagnosis: you are recording facts and listing questions, not judging the structure or the systems.

• Year built, and the years of any major changes you know of. Age suggests which materials may be present (lead paint, asbestos products, galvanized or polybutylene pipe, aluminum wiring, undersized panels) and what an inspector may want to see when the walls open.
• Prior permits. Your building department keeps permit records; ask how to see the history for your address (some put it online, some require a records request). Unpermitted past work is a common and expensive discovery, and knowing in advance changes the scope. Keep whatever you find with the brief.
• Drawings and surveys you already have. The plat or survey from your purchase, any old drawings, the septic as-built, the well log. Note which exist and where they are.
• Structure and systems as you observe them, in plain words: "two-by-six rafters, no ridge beam visible," "100-amp panel, no open slots," "gas water heater, 2015 label," "cast iron drain under the slab, we think." Photographs help. You are not drawing conclusions; you are telling the designer where to look.
• Hazardous materials: a question for qualified testers, not a DIY claim. If the house was built before 1978, lead paint is possible. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) explains its Renovation, Repair and Painting rule on its page Renovation, Repair and Painting Program: Do-It-Yourselfers; the page states that the rule requires lead-safe certified firms for renovation work in pre-1978 housing and child-occupied facilities, explains the cases in which a homeowner's own work is and is not covered (for example when part of the home is rented), recommends hiring certified firms, and lists the practices it advises for anyone who proceeds. Asbestos appears in many products from the same era (floor tile, pipe and duct insulation, some ceiling and wall textures, siding); whether a survey is required before demolition, and who may remove what, is set by state and local rules that vary. The brief's job is to write down: the year built, whether anything has been tested, by whom, and the results; and if nothing has, to list testing as an unknown with a qualified testing firm as the way to resolve it. Do not write "no asbestos" or "no lead" unless a qualified tester has told you so in writing.
• Utilities and private systems. Where the water, sewer or septic, gas and electric enter; whether the septic has capacity for another bedroom (often a health-department question); whether the well has been tested.
• The outside of the work zone. The rooms adjoining the work, the hall the dumpster path crosses, the lawn the excavator drives over, the neighbor's fence, the driveway. Say what condition they are in now, with photographs, so that "it was like that before" has a date on it.

8. See it: one brief, written twice See it

The Dunmores own a 1962 single-story ranch and want a primary suite. Here is their first attempt, as sent to an architect by email.

Version 1: the wish list

The architect would have replied with twenty questions. Instead, the Dunmores worked through sections 2 to 7 and sent this.

Version 2: the scope

Version 2 is about 800 words and took the Dunmores an afternoon. The architect's first meeting was spent on design. Two things to notice: the budget line answers questions nobody had asked yet, and the hall bath did not disappear; it was moved somewhere it cannot quietly rejoin the scope.

9. Practice: write your brief Practice

Time: 60 to 90 minutes for a first version; expect to revise it twice. Open the project brief and scope worksheet, which has sections for each part of the brief and a priority column for scope items. Then:

1. Write the goals first. Three to five sentences, each starting with why. If you cannot say why a feature is there, it is a "could" until you can.
2. List constraints by category: money (ceiling, what it includes, status), time (preferences, any hard constraint and its reason), site, rules and reviews, people, the existing building. One sentence each, saying what it affects.
3. Dump the wish list into the scope section without editing. Then rewrite each item as a scope line: where, what, how much, to what standard, who supplies. Use allowances or plain-words levels for anything not selected.
4. Write the exclusions before you think you are done. Walk the house in your mind from the front door to the work zone and back out to the street, listing everything you pass that the work might touch and that you do not intend to pay for.
5. Sort every scope item and feature into must, should, could and not now. Argue about it with whoever shares the decision; the argument is the point.
6. Fill the unknowns register: each unknown, why it matters, who resolves it, by when. Anything resolved by an authority goes to the verification list as well.
7. Record existing conditions: year built, permit history request, what you observe, testing status, photographs of the outside of the work zone.
8. Run the stranger test from section 6 against every scope line. Mark the fails and fix them, or move the item to unknowns with a resolution.

If you do not have a project yet and are still exploring, write the brief for a project you might do; the practice is the same and the document will be useful when the real one arrives.

10. Your project Your project

11. Check your work Check your work

Criteria

• Every goal is a "why" sentence; every feature sits under a goal or in "could."
• The money constraint states a ceiling, what it includes and excludes, and whether it is tentative.
• Every scope line passes the seven-part stranger test, or the failing part is listed as an unknown with a resolution.
• Every finish has a product, a defined allowance or a plain-words level. No "nice," "good," "modern," or "updated."
• The exclusions list exists and includes the outside of the work zone (adjacent rooms, access routes, the lawn, the driveway).
• There is a "not now" list with at least one item on it. (A project with nothing deferred has usually deferred nothing honestly.)
• The unknowns register names who resolves each item and by when, and nothing hazardous is declared absent without a tester's report.
• The year built and the permit-history request are recorded.

Worked example

Apply the test to one line of the Dunmores' first version and one of their second:

Note that v2 still contains unknowns (panel, HVAC, setback, testing). It passes anyway, because each one is named, assigned and dated. A priceable scope is not a scope with no uncertainty; it is one where the uncertainty is visible. What remains open is real: the setback answer could shrink the footprint, the panel and HVAC assessments could add cost the ceiling has not yet seen, and the testing could change the demolition price. The brief passes because those are named and assigned, not because they are settled, and the ceiling is a constraint the estimates have not yet tested.

Common mistakes

• Scope creep by accretion. Items added one at a time, each small, none priced, none sorted into a bin. The cure is the priorities table: nothing enters scope without a bin and a reason.
• "While we're at it." The plumber being on site does not make a second bathroom cheap; it makes the first one later. Put it in "not now" with a note on what small preparation (a capped line, a conduit) would make it easier later.
• Undefined finish levels. A major source of proposal spread and of mid-project arguments. Every finish gets a product, a defined allowance or a plain-words level.
• Forgetting the outside of the work zone. The hall carpet under the dumpster path, the lawn under the excavator, the dining room next to demolition, the neighbor's side of the fence. If the brief does not say who protects and repairs them, the answer is you.
• Declaring what you have not tested. "No asbestos" and "nothing weird" are hopes. Write the age, the testing status, and who will test.
• A budget with no contents. "$200k" without saying whether it includes fees, permits, contingency and the deck is a number that will be wrong by exactly those amounts.

What is still unresolved

• Everything on the unknowns register, by design. The register is the agenda for Module 4 (authority questions), Module 6 (allowances and contingency) and Module 8 (selection dates).
• Whether the brief's ceiling is realistic for the scope: that is the first thing estimates will test, and Module 6 prepares you for the answer.
• Who will turn the brief into drawings, and who will price it (Modules 3 and 7).

12. Knowledge check and scenario

Before you move on

• My brief has three to five goals written as "why" sentences, and every feature sits under one.
• Every scope line passes the stranger test, or its failing part is in the unknowns register with a resolution and a date.
• My exclusions list includes the outside of the work zone, and my "not now" list has at least one item.
• The money constraint states what the ceiling includes and whether it is tentative.
• Year built, permit-history request, and hazardous-materials testing status are recorded, with no untested material declared absent.
• The people who share this decision have read the brief and argued about the priorities.