Estimating Your Budget

One of the common questions people have when starting a project is, “How much it will cost to build?”. Some will have a fixed budget in mind, others will not. In either case it is important to take the time to make sure your requirements (the Brief) and the Budget are aligned from the start. This can often mean making tough decisions to reconcile what you want with what you can afford, however this invariably avoids a lot of pain and distress later on when the stakes are far higher.

The most common way of estimating a project’s cost before putting pen to paper is to assess its anticipated size (in square meters) against construction cost data per square meter - a process known as benchmarking. This €/sqm. data is usually presented as a range, which reflects how prices can vary depending on the level of quality & finish sought, the complexity of the project and its location. Understandably, estimating a project cost on this basis will never be especially accurate, however it does provide an invaluable initial check and a way of establishing a realistic Budget. As designs develop for a project it is possible to gain a greater level of cost accuracy (within the Budget set) and in those instances we would always recommend a Quantity Surveyor’s input.

There are a number of places where you can find construction cost data and a common one we refer to is published by the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland (RIAI). You can download their 2019 report here. As noted by the RIAI, the rates shown are for average construction build costs only and are representative of typical specifications for each type of project. They do not include VAT, professional fees, levies, planning charges, or inflation. Unique designs or challenging sites would not be within the cost ranges shown.

When checking cost data it’s good to make sure you have the most recent figures available, as they can change dramatically in any given year, so we would also recommend cross-checking different sources, such as Linesight who produce annual construction cost information.

Lastly, at LBBC we strongly believe that good design is not synonymous with having a big Budget or high €/sqm. rate. There are a million and one ways to spend your money, the key is spending it wisely on the things that matter most. This is where we as architects come into our own. We’ll do a separate blog post on this topic in relation to some examples we’ve worked on.

Image: Material board for Chadwick Hall, by Henley Halebrown

Image credit: Ståle Eriksen