As you can see from the previous description, there are many steps to the design process. The more of the design that is completed by the time a quote is needed, the more accurate that quote can be. In order to make an accurate prediction of the selling price of any product, one needs to know how much labor at what cost will be needed to produce the item, how much material is needed, and its cost. To that, overhead costs are added, and, of course, some profit must be added. It makes no sense to guess at these numbers, since one will always either guess too high, and loose the bid, or too low, and wish you had lost it.

The rub is, the quote is needed pretty early in the process, before a prospective customer can make an informed decision about whether to engage us to produce a housing. There was not a good way to differentiate those who were serious candidates from those who just curious about how much a housing would cost. Since each housing is different, often in subtle ways, there is no point in listing costs of past projects on this site.

We used to spend hours working the data through the design process to the point where we could make a fair estimate of the cost. For each customer that engaged us, we were already partly done in the process. However, for each inquiry that did not turn into a sale, those hours were wasted.

In an effort to make better use of the time, we have used the following procedure for a couple of years, with pretty good success.

The site visitor sends in the form. From that information, and possibly some email or phone questions, we make a Budgetary Estimate. This will usually be a pretty wide range, but gives the prospective customer a ballpark idea of the cost.

If the prospective customer is not willing to pay a cost in that price range, there is no sense in spending more if anybody's time. If the prospective customer is satisfied with the estimate, the next step is to do enough of the design to make an accurate Quotation.

This is several hours of work, part of the normal design process, and needs to be paid for. By charging a Non-refundable Engineering (NRE) fee of $100 for this step, we can spend some quality time bringing up the design to a point where we can accurately identify problems and costs, propose solutions, and eventually make a sound and defendable Quotation. Often this Quotation will list some options that may either omit features and save cost, or add features and cost. The Client receives a detailed written Quotation and a CAD drawing with several views and major dimensions of the housing. If the client accepts the quote, the process continues, and the NRE fee is applied to the price of the housing. If the client does not accept the quote, the fee is lost.

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