Nine people doing residential renovation and extension work, where the most damaging conversation is the one about money that happens six weeks too late.
A client approves a concept, the studio develops it, a contractor prices it, and the number comes back 30% over what the client had in mind. Everyone then spends two rounds cutting a design that was never affordable — unpaid work for the studio and a bruised relationship with the client.
Concept plans go into Joffers as soon as they are drawn. The scope that comes back is coarse by design at that stage — areas, volumes, room-by-room finishes — but it is priced against regional rates, so the studio can tell a client that this version lands around €240,000 while the one with the glazed rear lands around €310,000.
As the drawings develop, the same project is re-run. The estimate tightens with the design instead of arriving at the end of it, and the studio can show exactly which decision moved the number.
“Cost used to be the thing we found out about. Now it's a material we design with.”
Concept budgets have tracked within roughly 7% of the contractor's eventual price, which is close enough for clients to make decisions on. Two redesign rounds per project have disappeared, and the studio now offers the early cost picture as a paid part of concept work rather than a favour.
Exported from Joffers · figures illustrative