Why Bids Don't Add Up

An addition, home remodel, kitchen remodel, or bath remodel, is more than a number. It's something you're going to live with. It's something you're looking forward to as bringing new value, excitement and utility to your home. And it's something you're going to have to live through, so you want it done right, without a lot of headaches, setbacks, and cost overruns.

"We tell customers you can have two of three things: quality, service and price. We offer quality and service, but can't offer the lowest price because we're unwilling to sacrifice either quality or service. We want to give the best of those both."
Marlene Buckner, Designer

Instead of looking at bids, we suggest you look at the quality of the work each company has done before and its process.

As you interview each company, ask yourself these questions:

Will this company do quality work?
Are they good people? Will they treat me and my family well?
Will they be able to understand and fulfill my needs and wishes?
Will they use good subcontractors—people I want in my home?
What structures do they have in place to make sure they will finish the job when they say they will?
What steps will they take to minimize the disruption to my life during construction?
Does their bid really include everything? Or will there be changes and change orders that will raise the ultimate price I pay?
What are they sacrificing or leaving out of their bid in order to beat another company's price?

Why Bids Aren't in Your Best Interest

The purpose of a bid is to give you a way to compare one company to the next. But bids don't really compare companies. They compare price. So in creating bids, companies often sacrifice something to get a lower bid than the other company. Often, it's quality or service. Either they're going to use lower quality materials or they're going to sacrifice service, spreading their people too thin over too many jobs, or using substandard people.

The Master Plan Method

At Master Plan, we want you to choose based on company, not just price. So we will:

Talk to you about your project
Find out what your needs and wants
Examine the structure of your home
Help establish a realistic budget
Show you on paper and in your home the process by which your project will be completed

If the budget works for you, then we start with a design contract that covers our discovery process. The design contract covers:

Developing design alternatives
Identifying the materials and level of finish you want
Outlining a general scope and budget expectation
Completing a final concept
Establishing a start and end date

From this final concept, we can develop a schedule and a final contract price. Both of which we'll hold to—unless you make changes or additions on your end.

Contract Price Versus Bid

The advantage of our process is that you get a true price, one that hasn't been compromised by trying to outbid another company, but instead is totally based on giving you the final product you want for your home.

Do we lose jobs by not providing bids? Sometimes. But they're not the kinds of jobs we would want. They're based on bid, not company and relationship.

Are we more expensive than other companies? Not really. You get what you pay for in the end. We provide you with the exceptional workmanship, service and peace of mind that add up to real value no matter how you do the math.