Articles
Notes from the owner’s side of the job
What we have learned running renovations, build-outs and new construction: costs, schedules, contracts and the details that decide opening day.
Picking a commercial GC: what to ask before the contract
Three proposals on the table, all within a few percent of each other, all with the same paragraph about quality and communication. Owners tell us this is where…
Read the article →Seven levers that move the cost of a commercial build
When an owner hands us a napkin sketch and asks what it will cost, the honest answer starts with seven questions. Not because we are dodging. Because the same…
Read the article →In-house crews and your opening date: why self-performing matters
The week a hotel is supposed to reopen its rooms is the week you find out who actually controls your schedule. If the drywall crew belongs to a company three p…
Read the article →Ten stages of a commercial build, from first sketch to opening day
Walk onto a job at week thirty and you can usually tell, within an hour, which stages got skipped back in month one. The drywall is up but the electrical inspe…
Read the article →Hotel renovation cost: the factors that move the budget
The first walk on a hotel renovation is not through the drawings. It is down the guest corridors with the general manager, counting how many rooms the property…
Read the article →Budgeting a retail build-out in Texas: what moves the number
The rent clock is the first thing we look at when a retail tenant hands us a lease. Somewhere in the work letter there is a date when rent starts, and that dat…
Read the article →Houston commercial construction cost per square foot: 2026 guide
The first question on almost every site walk in Houston is the same one: what is this going to run per square foot. We answer it standing on the dirt, with a c…
Read the article →Preconstruction: what it saves before the first crew arrives
The most expensive week on most jobs is the one nobody remembers: the week before anybody signed anything, when a drawing set went out with a duct chase that d…
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