Burnham
Mixed-Use.
A 38-unit residential plus ground-floor commercial development on the south end of Kalispell's downtown core. Estimating, MEP coordination, and a value-engineering pass — delivered across nine months from concept-budget through occupancy.
From a single-storey shop
to thirty-eight homes above.
The Burnham parcel — three thousand square feet of street frontage on the south end of Kalispell's Main Street — had been a single-storey commercial building for forty-eight years when its new owner walked into our studio with the question every developer asks: what could this carry? She had two pages of pro-forma from her lender, a structural condition report from a previous owner, and an expectation that we would tell her what was real.
We started, as we do, with a four-page concept budget. Three storeys above the existing footprint, a re-clad street level retained as commercial, common stair, and elevator. We worked in rough order of magnitude — high-side ranges, generous contingency — and came back inside the week with a number. The number was high enough to make her pause and low enough that the deal pencilled. She gave us the go.
The schematic phase.
Lisa Morgan led the schematic design, working in plan with our estimating team in the next room. Unusual? In a small studio, no. The benefit is that every massing decision was being priced in real time. When the south elevation gained a balcony, we knew within an hour what it added in steel and waterproofing. When the unit mix shifted from 28 one-beds plus 10 two-beds to a more rentable 22 + 16, the takeoff was already updated by the time the sketch was finished.
Two value-engineering passes.
At the end of design development we ran a value-engineering pass against the schematic budget. The first pass returned $412,000 — primarily by swapping the rooftop's standing-seam metal for an EPDM membrane on the flat portions and revising the structural steel schedule to delete two columns the architect had wanted for visual symmetry. The second pass, in early CDs, returned a further $272,000 by aligning plumbing risers between floors and standardising the bathroom layouts. Total VE: $684,000 against a base estimate of $14.6m.
The variance,
division by division.
The complete reconciliation between our pre-construction estimate and the final paid-out cost, at division level. Overall variance came in at +1.7% — well within the band we quote our clients up front.
Their concept budget was within two percent of where the project actually closed. We made our financing decisions on that number, and it held. I don't know another firm in the state I'd say that about.