Architect first or contractor first? Choosing how to deliver a tenant build-out

The timing matters more than the order

For a simple office or retail finish-out with a clear scope, hiring the architect first and bidding the finished drawings to contractors works well. For a restaurant, a medical office or any project with a fixed opening date, bring the contractor in while the design is still being drawn, either alongside your architect or under a single design-build contract. The goal is to know the real cost and schedule before the drawings are finished, not after the bids come back.

At Harrison Construction we are brought in at every stage, from an owner with a bare idea to an owner holding a permitted set of drawings. I have seen each route work and each route fail. What separates them is usually not the quality of the architect or the builder but how late the owner learned something they needed to know. Here is how the three common delivery routes work, in plain terms, so you can pick the one that fits your space and your calendar.

Three ways a build-out gets delivered

Every commercial project follows one of a few patterns, whether or not anyone names it. The names matter less than understanding who works for whom and when each person gets involved.

Each route moves the same work to a different point on the calendar. In all three, someone still has to design the space, price it, get it permitted and build it. What changes is when the builder first sees the design, when the owner first sees a reliable number and who carries responsibility when the drawings and the real building disagree.

• Design-bid-build: you hire an architect, finish the drawings, then bid them to contractors and hire one
• Early contractor involvement: you hire an architect and a contractor at the same time, and the contractor prices and reviews the design as it develops
• Design-build: one firm holds a single contract for both design and construction

Design-bid-build: clean competition, late answers

This is the route most owners know. The architect designs the space, the drawings are completed, and several contractors bid them. Its strength is competition on a defined scope: every bidder prices the same drawings, and you can compare numbers directly. For a straightforward office or retail space where the landlord has delivered a clean vanilla shell and there are few unknowns, it often works well.

Its weakness is timing. The first time anyone prices the design is after it is finished, and if the bids come in over budget, you pay the architect to redesign and lose weeks doing it. Shell conditions that a builder would have spotted on a site walk are often discovered only during bidding or construction. And long-lead items such as rooftop units and kitchen hoods cannot be ordered until a contractor is hired, which is late in the process. For a restaurant on a fixed date, those weeks are often the ones you cannot afford.

Bringing the contractor in while the design is drawn

In this route you still hire your own architect, but you also bring a contractor on early under a pre-construction agreement. The contractor walks the space, reviews the drawings as they develop, prices options, flags what will be expensive or slow, and builds a schedule. Our pre-construction work covers due diligence, conceptual estimating, value engineering, constructability review, a project development schedule, bidding, subcontractor qualification and permitting, and all of it is most useful while the design can still change cheaply.

The owner keeps an independent architect who works for them, and gains a builder's eye on cost and constructability from the start. Long-lead equipment can be identified and ordered sooner, and the budget is tested at each stage rather than once at the end. I go through each of those steps in detail in what pre-construction really is.

Design-build: one contract for design and construction

The Design-Build Institute of America describes the single contract for both design and construction as the fundamental difference between design-build and other delivery methods. In practice, one firm, or a contractor with an architect working under it, takes responsibility for the drawings and the build. You have one point of contact and one party accountable for whether the design can be built for the price.

Design-build can be fast, because design and construction overlap and there is no separate bidding phase. It works best when the owner knows what they want and can describe it clearly, for example a franchise concept with a defined program and standards. The trade-off is that the designer does not work independently for you, so you lose some of the outside check on the builder that a separate architect provides. If you choose it, be very clear in writing about the program, the finish standards and how changes are priced.

Ask a design-build firm who actually does the drawings, whether an in-house team or an outside architect working under the builder, and whether that designer is licensed where your project is located. Ask to see a completed set from a similar project. The quality of the drawings still decides how smoothly the permit and the build go, even when the designer and the builder share a contract.

Which route fits which kind of space

There is no single right answer, but there are patterns. The more systems, unknowns and schedule pressure a project carries, the more it benefits from a contractor at the table early.

Owners also sometimes switch routes midstream. If you have finished drawings but the bids came in high, you can still bring one contractor in to work through value engineering with your architect rather than re-bidding blind. If you started design-build and want an independent opinion, you can hire an architect to review the drawings. The best route is the one that gets you the truth about cost and time earliest.

• Simple office or retail in a vanilla shell: design-bid-build usually works
• Restaurant, especially in a first-generation shell: early contractor involvement
• Dental or medical office with heavy plumbing and equipment: early contractor involvement
• Franchise unit with a defined prototype: early involvement or design-build
• Remodel of an operating business: early involvement, to plan phasing
• Any project with a fixed opening date and little float: get the contractor in early

What each route asks of you as the owner

Every route needs a decisive owner, but in different ways. Design-bid-build asks you to make most of your decisions before bidding, because changes after the contract is signed become change orders. Early contractor involvement asks you to attend more meetings during design and to react to cost information as it arrives, sometimes choosing between a feature you want and the budget you set. Design-build asks you to define what you want clearly at the start, because the firm will carry that brief all the way through.

Whichever you choose, name one person on your side who can approve decisions quickly, and agree on how fast questions will be answered. In my experience, a slow approval does more damage to a schedule than almost any construction problem, regardless of how the project was delivered.

Franchise and multi-unit projects play by slightly different rules

Franchise projects usually start with a prototype design from the franchisor, which then has to be adapted to a specific site by a local architect and engineers who know the local codes. That adaptation is where the trouble hides: a prototype kitchen dropped into a space with the sewer line on the wrong side or a roof that cannot take the exhaust fan. A contractor involved during site adaptation can catch those conflicts before they are drawn into the permit set.

Multi-unit operators have another reason to think about delivery: consistency. Using the same builder across locations means lessons from one store carry into the next, and the franchisor's development team deals with one familiar process. We are licensed in 29 states and have built for national restaurant brands, so we see this pattern often. Whatever route you choose for the first unit, write down what worked and what did not before the second one starts.

How to set up early contractor involvement fairly

Owners sometimes worry that bringing a contractor in early means losing competitive pricing. It does not have to. A well-structured pre-construction agreement defines what the contractor will deliver during design, such as estimates at set milestones, a schedule and a constructability review, and what it costs. Subcontractor pricing can still be competitively bid, with the results shared openly, and the contractor's fee and general conditions can be agreed before the final price is set.

Be clear about what you own if you part ways: the estimates, the schedule and the site information should be yours to use. Ask how the contractor will report cost as the design develops, and how contingency will be handled once the price is set. If you are interviewing contractors for this kind of role, the questions to ask a commercial contractor before hiring will help you compare them.

Where to start this week

If you have a space in mind but no architect yet, call a contractor who builds your type of project and an architect who designs it, and ask each of them to walk the space with you. If you already have an architect, ask them whether they are open to a contractor joining during design. Most good architects welcome it, because it protects their design from being value-engineered beyond recognition at the bid stage.

If you already have drawings and a date, the useful conversation is about schedule. I explain how to protect the opening date in finishing a build-out before the free-rent clock runs out. Wherever you are in Dallas–Fort Worth or the other states where we work, we are glad to look at what you have and tell you honestly which route will serve the project best.

Questions people ask me