Div 03 · Design Phase Advisory
The cheapest place to change a building is on paper.
By the end of design, most of your project's cost is committed and almost none of it is spent. Nothing you decide afterward moves the number nearly as far.
Design is the phase where an owner holds the most leverage and has the least practice using it. You select an architect from a field you have no real basis to compare, sign an agreement written around their obligations, and then watch a drawing set develop in a language you were never taught to read — while the budget those drawings imply stays largely invisible until bid day. Design phase advisory is the owner's side of all three: choosing and contracting the design team, then reviewing what they produce at each milestone against your program, your budget, and each other's drawings. We hold no design scope and carry no design liability. Our job is that you know what you are approving before you approve it.
Written recommendations within two business days · Nothing to prepare · Mutual NDA from the first conversation
Division
Div 03
Phase
Design
Issued for
Owner review
Sheet
S-103
The record behind the judgment
$280M+
In capital projects delivered
20 yrs
Design and construction, both sides of the table
Zero
Unplanned outages, live data-center upgrade
Secret
Active U.S. DoD clearance
What design phase advisory covers
The work starts before the first drawing exists. Selecting a design team is a comparison exercise most owners run exactly once: shortlisting firms whose recent built work actually resembles your project, writing a request that asks every firm for the same scope so the fee proposals can be compared at all, and checking references on the questions that matter — did the drawings hold up in plan check, did the design stay inside the budget it was given. Then the agreement itself, before it is signed: what basic services include, what is excluded, how additional services get triggered and priced, how many revision cycles you have, what the reimbursables are, and who owns the documents if the relationship ends. That one contract governs every drawing that follows it, and the fee is rarely where the risk is sitting.
Then the drawings, at each milestone. At schematic design the questions are whether the scheme serves the program you actually have and whether the area it implies can be built for the budget you actually hold. At design development, whether the systems are resolved and every choice carrying a cost consequence was made deliberately rather than by default. At construction documents, whether the set is coordinated — architectural against structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing — because a clash nobody catches on paper gets discovered by a contractor in the field and priced accordingly. Each review lands as written comments, submitted to the design team as the owner's comments and tracked until they are answered, adopted, or knowingly waived.
Where owners lose money in design
Design losses are quiet, because nothing is being spent yet. An architect gets selected on portfolio and rapport with no one asking whether their recent projects held their budgets. Fee proposals get compared on the bottom line while one carries civil and landscape and the other excludes both — so the cheaper firm becomes the expensive one three additional-service requests later. The program drifts upward in increments that are each individually reasonable, with nothing tallying the total until a bid arrives and reprices the whole thing. Milestones pass without a genuine owner review, and "approved" becomes a signature on a set nobody read — which is precisely the record that gets cited back to you when you later ask for a change at no cost. And coordination gaps ride the documents all the way to the field, where they stop being a redline and become a change order with a schedule attached. Every one of these costs a meeting to catch in design and a change order to catch anywhere else.
What we deliberately don't do
Aldermont holds no design license and does not design — deliberately, and it is exactly what makes the review worth having. We do not produce your drawings, do not compete for your architect's scope, and do not overrule their professional judgment: the licensed A/E owns the design, the code analysis, and the stamped documents, and carries the liability that comes with them. Our comments enter the project as the owner's comments, which the design team is free to adopt, answer, or explain — and a good explanation is frequently the right outcome of a review. We also don't run value engineering as a cost-cutting campaign against your design team; we price the consequences of the options in front of you so the choice between them is yours to make on the facts. The owner decides. We advise.
Asked about this service
How do I choose an architect for my project?
Start from built work that resembles yours in type, size, and jurisdiction — not from a portfolio's best photographs. Ask every shortlisted firm for a proposal against the same written scope, because fee numbers built on different assumptions cannot be compared, and the gap usually hides in what one firm excluded. Then check references on the two questions owners forget to ask: how the drawings performed in plan check, and whether the design stayed inside the budget it was given. Talent is easy to see in a portfolio; budget discipline and document quality only show up in references and in the set itself.
Why would I hire someone to review my architect's drawings?
Not because your architect is doing a bad job — because no one designing a set is positioned to read it as the party who pays for what it leaves out. An independent review asks a different set of questions: does this still match the program you described, does the area imply a number your budget can carry, are the consultants' drawings coordinated with the architectural, and is anything unresolved that a contractor will price as an assumption. Those questions serve the owner's interests specifically, and asking them during design is what keeps them from being answered during construction at construction prices.
What should I look for in an architect's contract?
The scope boundaries, mostly. Confirm which consultants are included and which you will have to hire separately — civil, landscape, geotechnical, and specialty engineering are common exclusions. Understand exactly what triggers additional services and how they are priced, since that clause is where most fee surprises originate. Check how many revision cycles the basic fee covers, what the construction administration scope actually is, how reimbursables are handled, and who owns and can reuse the documents if the relationship ends early. None of this is adversarial — a clear agreement protects the architect just as much as it protects you.
When should I bring in a design phase advisor?
Before you sign the design agreement, if you can — selection and contracting is where the smallest amount of advisory time protects the most money. The next best moments are the milestone submissions: schematic design, design development, and the construction document set, each of which is a natural review point that already exists in your architect's schedule. Coming in later still works, but the fixes get more expensive at every step. If you want to test the value before committing to anything, the $350 project review is built for it — bring the drawing set or the proposal you are weighing, and the fee is credited in full against your first invoice if you engage us.
Two ways in
Start where the risk is lowest.
Orientation call · 20 minutes · no fee
Find out whether you need us at all.
Fifteen minutes on your project, five on a straight answer: whether an advisor is worth your money at this stage, what it would take, and what it would cost. No documents, no preparation. If the answer is that you don't need one yet, you'll get that answer too — it's the cheapest thing we can tell you.
Project review · 60 minutes · $350, credited if you engage
Bring the project. Leave with recommendations.
A working session on your actual documents — the parcel you're weighing, the drawing set, the budget, the permit path you can't see through. Written recommendations land within two business days, in your hands to act on with or without us. If you engage us, the fee comes off your first invoice in full.
What to prepare: nothing.
Send whatever is already on your desk — a site address, a PDF set, a bid, a change order, a letter you don't like the tone of. Or send nothing and just talk. Working out which of it actually matters is the job you're hiring, not homework you owe us first.
Related field notes