Church Construction – 6 Reasons Not To Bid

I AM BIASED!  And so are you.  We’re biased towards our churches, our communities, our kids….we’re even biased on the Mac vs PC thing (I”m a Mac guy).  We’re biased becasue we believe in our heart the way we have chosen is the best way.

With that in mind I want to give you my highly biased point of view on why you don’t want to BID a church construction project.  I’m biased because I believe Bidding is the precurser to some very predictable problems for a church construction project. 

Here are just 6  of the reasons I’m so biased toward a design build process

1. You’ll get a different church design

If you hire an architect right of the bat he’s going to do exactly what you ask him to do, which is translate the dream into drawings for a new facility.  The good ones will spend lots of time with your team hearing about your church and the specific desires that need to be addressed.  Some of them will even build a budget for you that includes some non-construction related items like furniture and audio.  What you don’t get is that healthy tension created when the church, who dreams it, sits with the architect, who draws it, and a construction consultant, who builds it.   There is a difference between someone saying it “should” cost this and someone who says I’ll actually build it for this.  The tension between Design and Affordability has to be managed from day 1

2. You don’t have a real price until the project is done

When a contractor submits a bid for a construction job their number is about 1 thing only,  winning the job.  Unfortunately most churches thing the bid number is the actual number the contractor is agreeing to build the church for.  If you don’t believe me ask any builder who bids if they would sign on the dotted line to finish the project for their bid price.   In reality you can’t expect a contractor to risk his business to guarantee tke price of a building where he had nothing to do with designing it.   With traditional BID project you won’t really know what the building costs until the project is completed (assuming you keep good records). 

3.  Banks real info….quick!

Admittedly I don’t understand this fully.  We’ve built nearly 700 churches over the last 40 years and getting a church funded in this economy reminds me of the joy of my middle school years.  Banks want to see not just that your doing a capital campaign, but how you’re doing collecting on it.  They also ask us regularly for cost information on a church we’re all working with to build.   What I don’t understnad is how a church with a BID strategy is meeting that need the bank has for information when there simply isn’t any.  Bidding usually takes place anywhere from 6 to 14 months after the design begins.  That’s a long time to be casting vision without any real cost info.

4. Nobody’s managing the Non-Construction related costs

In the BID world Architects get paid to draw and Contractors get paid to build.  Its up to the church to manage things like the furniture budget, the AVL (audio, visual and lighting).  There are also things like permits and inflation as well as the “unexpected” cost (which you should expect).  Nobody in the BID process is charged specifically with driving the budget on these items.  BTW – the Non-Construction Items can easily cost 30-50% of the  total project cost. 

5. Project Drives the Budget

I’ve hit the numbers pretty hard here but I want to make one final point.  In a BID project the project almost always drives the budget.  That’s the equivalent to having a staff member who makes purchases for their area of ministry based on what they NEED vs what their budget allows for.   The best way to build a church is to have a firm understanding of what you can afford and move backward into a design. 

6.  Vision Blur

Let me make you a guarantee.  Your leadership will be challenged when its time to build.  No matter the path.   You want to do the absolute best job you can to be strategic in how you bring your staff, leadership and congregation in to what the church is trying to accomplish.  If you choose the BID route casting vision maybe something you find difficult and ever changing.  It would probably be wise to have a strategy that didn’t tie your vision to tightly to the price.  Vision Blur happens when you tell the people one thing and have to come back later and tell them something differnent. 

I don’t know everything there is to know about building churches but I’m incredibly passionate about it.  Subscribe to my blog and I’ll do my best to serve you regularly with helpful information about leading your church through the design and construction of your church. 

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