We will prepare a budget for us to work from. It will have lines for every type of expense we anticipate will relate to the project. The lines will show the costs and ultimately who will provide that item (for example where the plumbing fixtures are being purchased from). Each line will progress through phases during the project and the accuracy will increase as the line progresses from an estimate to a quote, to a purchase order.

Estimates are cost numbers based on our experience; they are educated guesses. Most lines start as estimates. We’ve built a lot; we are pretty good at this, but seriously, these are guesses.

Quotes are firm prices from actual suppliers based on an actual selection. These are pretty locked in and reliable. Estimates, turn into quotes.

Items provided directly by our shop "*Randolph Shop*" or by Randy personally, usually have locked ("quoted") prices early in the budget process, and may skip the estimate stage altogether, because we have good control of our shop processes for example, and since we designed the project for you, we know what our part will entail. Depending on what we are building for you, this might be a good chunk of the project where we have good understanding of the costs, pretty early.

Supplier items can take a while to get to locked in stage, often because the client is fine tuning choices or design questions are getting resolved.

Sometimes supplier pricing can change during construction, due to any number of circumstances related to the client's site or other reasons. Randolph shop prices or Randy’s personal contribution will rarely change, usually only if the client has decided to alter something, in which case we try to pre-quote the change.

We do not take any markup or profit on supplier costs; these are flowed through at cost. We are as transparent as possible.

We earn our living through fees for design, estimating and supervision, and through our direct labour from the team at the Randolph Shop. Randy’s personal rate for 2024 is $125 / hour, usually quoted in advance. The shop rate for 2024 is $85 / hour. This covers vehicles, the shop building, tools, insurances and all the fun stuff of maintaining a business.

We ourselves do not require deposits in advance for construction.

We may invoice to pre-purchase materials, in which case the materials are deemed to be owned by the client.

Some outside suppliers may need pre-payment to order product.

In the design stage, we will sell design time in advance.

As work starts, we will invoice weekly for work completed during the past week. This keeps everything current. This invoice will encompass:

1. Randolph shop work from the past week.

2. Randolph site work from the past week.

3. Supervision or project work from the past week.

4. Supplies and outside supplier work from the past week, which are flowed through at their cost.

5. Upcoming material purchases.

6. You will receive a budget update that shows you how much you have paid to date to help your own tracking. Every expense is matched up against a budget line item.