How much time would you spend on executing the LCC?

[ShabnamNoor]

Hi Guys,

How much time would you spend on executing an actual LCC for which you are charging £1000?

I  figured out that for my LCC if I do a site visit, a couple of sketches and the planning/permit requirements it ends up taking 3-5 days and charging £1000 doesn’t even cover the cost of staff time spent on those tasks. So my thoughts are that maybe I am spending too much time on this and should find an efficient way to execute to reduce the time spent on it.

Alternatively, I could  just increase the price to £2000. Would be interesting to hear how much time other architects are spending on this?

Thanks,

Shab

[ShabnamNoor]

Hey Guys,

I think I have found my answer after going through the LCC module a couple of times. This is supposed to be a pre-design advice and we shouldn’t be spending time on the concept sketches just yet. For our target Niche “Luxury Home Renovations”, I have thought of the following LCC. This would include the following:

• Free Phone Consultation (30 mins to sell “Needs and Options Review”)
• Site visit (2-3 hours incl. travel)
• Basic planning analysis and constraints (2 hours)
• Interactive workshop with client at our office to formulate their brief (1-1.5 hours Something like RightTrack workshop)
• Freehand Sketches (Just a couple) – (2 hours)
• Outline Budget (30 mins)
• Project Team – who else would be required (30 mins)
• Results in the report format (2 hours)
• Price: £1500 ( The clients spend at least £250,000 on their project so this is a small amount to ask for)

Overall I would be spending 10-12 hours on something like this which means £150/hour in the best case scenario which is really good value for our time.

Would be testing this soon with prospects. I would love some feedback so please share your ideas/critique mine.

Thanks,

Shab

 

 

[TimAlatorre]

Shab,

Here are my thoughts.  I’m just getting started and you’ve been doing these for a year so I would be interesting in hearing how your process has evolved.

I don’t do the interactive workshop in office, I do all of my interviewing and exploration on site which saves a few hours and I still get enough information to do a reasonable analysis.  I also only spend about 20 minutes on sketches.  My LLC’s have a pretty standard template now so I can plug in the information pretty easily which means it takes about an hour to do the report.  All in, I’m averaging about 6 hours per LLC.

Tim

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