Assembly Days

Changing a design after the slab is cast costs far more than changing it on paper, because every later trade has already been planned around the old drawing. Every house has a season for design, when owner and architect argue over window sizes and where the kitchen goes, and then a season for assembly, when the bricklayers need the drawing to stay still.

Consider an owner who decides, halfway up the walls, that the lounge should be bigger. It sounds small. But the approved plans at the municipality show the old lounge, so the change needs amended plans. The roof trusses already ordered may now be the wrong length, and the builder's team stands around while the paperwork catches up.

So the work of an assembly season is mostly finishing what was decided. That design was argued over properly, with drawings, quotes and an engineer's input, and the argument deserves some respect. Honestly, most houses that run late and over budget did not fail at design. They failed because somebody kept designing while the builders were trying to build.