Designing with Intent: The Owner’s Playbook for Preconstruction Clarity and Control
By Steve Dell’Orto, Founder and CEO, ConCntric
If you're an owner responsible for a capital program, you already know the harsh truth: most projects are set up to fall short on budget and schedule targets long before anyone pours concrete.
The numbers are stubborn and remarkably consistent. Studies show that large capital projects frequently run over budget and behind schedule – cost overruns in one sample averaged nearly 80%, and schedule delays more than 50%.
Researchers repeatedly point to the same culprit: missteps in early planning and preconstruction – not execution in the field. Poor scope definition, fuzzy early estimates, disconnected teams, and reactive decision-making quietly plant the seeds of the overruns and delays that erupt months or years later.
But here’s the opportunity hiding in plain sight: the earliest phase of a project – not the build phase – is where owners hold their greatest leverage. Done well, preconstruction has been shown to unlock double-digit improvements in cost certainty, schedule reliability, and project value. Done poorly, it forces even sophisticated owners into firefighting mode, hoping their delivery team can “fix it in the field,” which the industry knows rarely happens.
Owners don’t need more static reports, more late-stage redesigns, or more assumptions passed off as fact. They need clarity – early, accurate, and actionable.
That clarity comes from three connected capabilities that high-performing owner organizations are increasingly adopting:
- Credible conceptual budgeting.
- Rigorous scenario modeling.
- Portfolio-level discipline across all projects.
These aren’t buzzwords or software features. They are strategic levers that materially change how an owner steers outcomes – long before ground is broken.
1. Early Conceptual Budgeting: Setting The Anchor Where It Matters Most
Every owner knows early numbers matter, yet the industry still relies heavily on loose ROM estimates, outdated cost-per-square-foot rule-of-thumb assumptions, and planning assumptions with accuracy ranges of ±25%. Research from multiple departments of transportation confirms that insufficient early data and unclear risk definition directly lead to large budget variances later.
Early conceptual budgeting is not about predicting the future perfectly – it’s about anchoring the project around what is truly feasible. That means using historical benchmarks, normalizing costs for time and location, accounting for escalation, and grounding assumptions in structured data.
Consider a university system evaluating academic buildings, research labs, student housing, and infrastructure upgrades over a 10-year capital plan. If each project begins with a different methodology – or worse, with guesswork – the institution has no reliable basis for funding decisions, prioritization, or budget defense to internal boards.
Platforms such as ConCntric demonstrate how this can change. When owners structure historical data the same way contractors do, they gain the ability to model conceptual budgets in a much more accurate and easy-to-use system. Instead of vague ballparks, they get credible early budgets that guide design, align stakeholders, and significantly reduce downstream rework.
For owners, this clarity unlocks two critical advantages:
- Early go/no-go decisions grounded in actual data.
- A unified, defendable basis for every cost conversation that follows.
This is the difference between designing to a target and cutting back to meet one.
2. Scenario Modeling: Exploring Alternatives Before You Commit
Once a credible conceptual budget is established, the next strategic lever is scenario modeling –systematically evaluating multiple options before committing to a single direction.
Scenario modeling answers questions that owners constantly grapple with:
- What if we reduced the footprint and added height?
- What if we shifted the parking structure or changed the unit mix?
- What if we phased the project differently – or built two smaller buildings instead of one large one?
Research indicates that improving early-stage cost estimation can support better decision-making and alternative evaluation, giving owners more confidence in aligning design and budget early. Predictive modeling and data-driven “what-if” analysis have become core components of preconstruction maturity.
Platforms that enable real-time comparison of building types, site conditions, and program variations let decision-makers explore factors that go into making that decision without adding time or burden to the team. In other words, scenario modeling shifts decisions from reactive to strategic.
For owners, this translates to:
- Faster, more informed decisions
- Transparency into the cost impacts of every design choice
- Reduced design churn and fewer late-stage surprises
Scenario modeling is no longer a luxury – it’s a prerequisite for predictable outcomes.
3. Portfolio Discipline: Looking Beyond a Single Project
Many owner organizations – universities, healthcare systems, corporate campuses, and developers – manage not one project, but dozens. Yet, too often, each project is approached as if it exists in a vacuum.
This siloed approach obscures key questions:
- Which projects carry the most risk?
- How do costs compare across building types, regions, or delivery partners?
- Where are we trending off plan?
- Are we sequencing capital in a way that supports long-term strategy?
Oracle’s capital planning research emphasizes that organizations must understand their entire project pipeline to make the right investment decisions. A portfolio mindset allows owners to prioritize strategically, allocate resources intelligently, and forecast long-term capital needs with confidence.
And here’s where early conceptual budgeting and scenario modeling pay even greater dividends: When each project begins with disciplined, comparable data, owners gain actionable insight across their entire program – not just one isolated effort.
Instead of scrambling through disconnected spreadsheets or anecdotal reports, they can:
- Benchmark across projects and campuses.
- Spot systemic risks early.
- Provide board-ready, trustworthy reporting.
- Drive consistency, transparency, and accountability at scale.
Owners benefit tremendously when project data can be aggregated and displayed in many different ways to leadership, finance committees, or external partners – all without manual rework or lagging information.
Portfolio thinking transforms owners from managing projects to steering capital strategy.
4. A Strategic Framework for Owners
When owners combine these three capabilities, they create a powerful strategic framework:
- Anchor the project early using credible conceptual budgets.
- Explore multiple paths through scenario modeling before committing to design.
- Scale insights across your capital program with portfolio discipline.
Research from the Netherlands showed that most cost overruns originate in the preconstruction phase, not construction. In other words, mistakes get made early – but so does the value. Owners who take control in these early steps dramatically improve project outcomes across cost, schedule, and design quality.
To operationalize this framework, owners should ask their delivery teams:
- What data supports this concept budget?
- Show me three scenarios – how do cost, schedule, and scope shift?
- How is this project reported at a portfolio level?
- What platform ensures our data is structured, consistent, and transparent?
These questions elevate the owner’s role from recipient to strategic leader.
5. Why Now? Because Owners Can’t Afford Not To
Material volatility, workforce shortages, and accelerated project cycles aren’t going away. Projects are getting more complex, not less. Bain & Company reports that average cost overruns for large capital projects reached 17%, with delays averaging 2.5 years.
The status quo is no longer tenable.
But owners who lead with early clarity – credible budgets, scenario modeling, and portfolio discipline – are rewriting the rules. They are reducing risk, accelerating decisions, and setting their teams up for success long before ground breaks.
Modern preconstruction workflows not only enhance general contractor performance but also give owners a much more modern, data-driven, sophisticated platform that improves transparency, strengthens collaboration, and drives confidence across all stakeholders.
This isn’t about software – it’s about intent.
Designing with intent. Deciding with clarity. Delivering with confidence.
That’s how owners move from uncertainty to certainty – project by project, program by program.
Steve Dell’Orto is the founder and CEO of ConCntric, a preconstruction platform that is transforming the fractured preconstruction environment by unifying data, people and processes. ConCntric acts as a single source of truth for all preconstruction stakeholders by providing a dynamic view of the project that ensures certainty of outcome. Steve is also the founding member of “Built by Builders” network, a collaboration of construction tech startups led by founders with firsthand industry experience.
As a 26-year construction industry veteran who has lived and breathed the world of delivering preconstruction projects, Steve is uniquely positioned to bring digital transformation to the industry. Steve is the former Executive Officer of one of the largest privately-owned domestic general contractors in the U.S. with revenues averaging $5-6 billion annually.
Since launching ConCntric in 2021, Steve has built a dynamic global team and secured support from strategic and notable investors. Steve and his team are on a mission to make the built world more affordable, predictable and sustainable, and are uniquely positioned to transform the future for the construction and real estate industry.