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Design-Build vs. Hiring an Architect and Contractor Separately

Two Models, One Goal

When you decide to build a custom home, one of the first decisions you'll face is how to structure the project. The two most common approaches:

  • Traditional (Design-Bid-Build): You hire a residential designer to create the plans, then solicit bids from contractors to build them.
  • Design-Build: A single firm handles both the design and the construction under one contract.

Both can produce a beautiful home. But the experience of getting there — the cost, the timeline, the communication, and the stress level — can be very different.

How the Traditional Model Works

In the traditional approach, you start by hiring a residential designer. You work together to develop floor plans, elevations, and construction documents. Once the plans are complete, you send them out for bids from multiple contractors.

The advantages of this approach:

  • Competitive bidding: Multiple contractors pricing the same set of plans can create price competition.
  • Design independence: Your designer works solely for you, without builder influence on the design.
  • Separation of roles: Each party has a clearly defined lane.

The challenges:

  • Budget surprises: Plans developed without builder input frequently come back over budget when bids arrive. The redesign cycle — revise the plans, re-bid, revise again — can add months and thousands of dollars in additional design fees. The reality is that a decent number of plans drawn by outside designers never get built at all. Dreams outgrow the budget, and frustration replaces the joy that should come with building a custom home.
  • Communication gaps: The designer and builder don't share a workflow. Changes during construction require a chain of communication: owner to designer to builder and back. Misalignment between design intent and construction reality causes most custom home disputes.
  • Accountability gaps: When something goes wrong, the designer points to the builder and the builder points to the plans. With two separate contracts, there's no single point of responsibility.
  • Longer timelines: The sequential process — design, then bid, then build — extends the overall project duration by 3–6 months compared to an integrated approach.

How Design-Build Works

In a design-build model, one firm provides both the design and the construction. At Ver Woert Construction, that means our in-house design team works alongside the building team from day one. The designer who sketches your home is in the same room as the people who will frame it.

The advantages:

  • Budget alignment from the start: Because the builder is involved in the design phase, every design decision is evaluated against real construction costs in real time. When the builder is the designer, we can give you a rough but accurate estimate on how much that shiny thing in the showroom window actually costs to install — keeping aspirations in check with the desired end cost throughout the entire process.
  • Single point of responsibility: One contract, one team, one throat to choke (as the saying goes). If something doesn't match the plan, there's no finger-pointing — it's on us.
  • Faster timelines: Design and pre-construction overlap. While finishes are being selected, permits can be submitted and site work can begin. This parallel workflow typically saves 3–6 months.
  • Seamless communication: You have one primary contact. Design changes are evaluated for cost and feasibility immediately, not after a round-trip through separate offices.
  • Cost savings: The cost savings of design-build may feel like an intrinsic value at first, but they materialize throughout the process. When your primary contact is both the designer and the builder, the constant communication generates ideas and saving opportunities that simply don't happen when two separate firms are involved. Those accumulated efficiencies — fewer change orders, smarter material selections, real-time value engineering — add up to meaningful savings by the end of the project.

The challenges:

  • Less competitive bidding: You're committing to one builder early. The cost check comes from the firm's internal estimating, not from market competition.
  • Design and builder are the same entity: Some clients prefer having an independent designer as an advocate separate from the construction team.

Which Model Is Right for You?

The traditional model may be a better fit if:

  • You already have completed plans from a designer you love
  • You want the discipline of competitive bidding
  • You prefer strictly independent design and construction teams

Design-build tends to be a better fit if:

  • You want budget certainty from the earliest design stages
  • You value a streamlined, single-contact experience
  • You want to move from concept to move-in as efficiently as possible
  • You prefer one team accountable for the entire result

Our Perspective

We're a design-build firm, so our bias is obvious — but it's a bias born from experience. We've seen clients come to us after spending $30,000 or more on plans that were unbuildable within their budget. We've seen plans from out-of-state designers who didn't understand northern foundations or local structural engineering requirements — plans that looked beautiful on paper but would have failed in a Michigan winter. We've rescued projects stalled by designer-builder miscommunication. The integrated model simply produces fewer problems and better outcomes for most custom home clients.

If you're weighing your options and want to understand how a design-build process would work for your specific project, we're happy to walk you through it.