Every good builder has done it: reviewed a napkin sketch idea, walked a developer through why their proforma doesn't quite work yet. That early generosity is one of the best things about this industry. This week's episode of Proper Precon is a conversation about how to do more of it, and do it better.
There's a phrase the Proper Precon team has been kicking around: FreeCon. It's the early budgets, the option comparisons, the "can you just take a quick look at this?" that happens before any contract is signed. It's the work that builds relationships, earns trust, and ultimately gets deals in the ground.
This week Troy Simon and Trey Darnell sat down with Mike Navarro (20-year pre-construction veteran and CTO of Ediphi) to dig into the why behind FreeCon, the real value it creates, and how better tools and processes can make the whole cycle faster and more rewarding for builders, owners, and designers alike.
FreeCon is how trust gets built
The early stage of any project is full of uncertainty. A developer secures a parcel of land. An institution wants to improve an asset. Before anyone puts pen to paper on a contract, there are real questions that need real answers: Will this project pencil out? What does a hotel on this site actually cost? What are the right unit counts? Can we afford the program we're imagining?
Pre-construction professionals are uniquely positioned to answer those questions, and the best ones do it willingly, because that's how you become someone a developer picks up the phone to call.
A developer called me once. Couldn't even tell me what parcel it was. Wanted to put a hotel on a postage-stamp site and thought it'd be $420 a square foot. I was able to scaffold a quick estimate and show them it was closer to $900. That's the kind of thing that builds a relationship. They trusted me to give them the real picture early.
— Mike Navarro, CTO @ Ediphi
That's FreeCon at its best. A quick investment of time and expertise that gives a developer exactly what they need to make a real decision, and gives the builder a relationship built on demonstrated value, not just a bid number.
When the boomerang starts flying
Early FreeCon is straightforward. What gets complicated is when a project is in full design development and the questions just keep coming: round after round of pricing, each one triggered by a new "what if." What if we delete a floor? What if we change the facade? What if we swap unit types on floors 8 through 12?
Each of those questions is legitimate. The owner genuinely needs an answer before they can move forward. But in a traditional pre-construction workflow, each one means weeks of work, manually chasing cascading changes through a flat spreadsheet, hoping nothing slips through the cracks.
The core tension:
Builders want to answer every question quickly and thoroughly. That's exactly what makes them valuable. But without the right tools, speed creates its own trap. The faster you answer, the more questions you get, and the harder it becomes to keep up.
When you delete a floor, the number of stairs changes. All the vertical piping changes. The tile quantities, the mechanical systems, the structural model are all interconnected. If your estimate is a flat list of line items, you're not just re-pricing a floor. You're starting over.
You want to move as far left as possible. Work out all those "what if" questions as early as possible, in meetings (not months later). That's what reduces the pre-con timeline while still adding the value everyone needs.
— Mike Navarro
From flat spreadsheet to living pricing model
The shift Mike Navarro described isn't just about technology. It's a different way of thinking about what an estimate actually is. Not a static deliverable. Not a PDF that gets emailed after weeks of work. A living pricing model where every line item understands its relationship to every other.
- Get in the room earlier
Pre-con and design should happen concurrently. The earlier cost thinking enters the conversation, the fewer expensive surprises later. - Build defensible assumptions
Even conceptual estimates should scaffold real assumptions (pounds of rebar, facade ratios, unit counts). Vague numbers invite endless re-pricing. - Answer in meetings, not months
When a question can be answered in the room in real time, the whole cycle compresses. That's the standard worth building toward.
When you can tell a client exactly why the marble lobby costs $2 million, and then model what it looks like swapped to large-format porcelain, everyone can make a real decision. The architect understands the trade-off. The owner chooses based on value. The deal moves forward instead of stalling for another month of iterations.
That's not just better for the builder. It's better for every stakeholder in the room. Less adversarial, more collaborative, because everyone is working from the same transparent picture of the cost story.
Fast Five with Mike Navarro
Biggest obstacle to compressing the pre-con timeline?
Tools. Everyone's a little bit to blame (owners, GCs, design teams). But if they had better tools, better process follows naturally. The adversarial nature goes down when everyone's working from the same home.
Do GCs already have the historical data they need (they just can't access it)?
Yes. It's like a bunch of pipes stuck together with all your crown jewels spilling on the floor. The data is there. Fix the pipe and it flows. You can right-click a line item and see what similar work cost on the last five projects.
What could owners change tomorrow to have the biggest impact?
Bring pre-con into the room before design locks in. Design it all first, then price it — that's the paradigm that creates the most painful cycles. Concurrent pre-con and design changes everything.
What surprised you most moving from estimator to software builder?
The change management. "Don't move my cheese." People have their magic spreadsheets and their own templates. Getting them over the hump (just try it a little, there's gold on the other side) is genuinely hard. Worth it, but hard.
The estimate stops being just a number when...
...you recognize that every line item is interdependent to all the others. It's a pricing model, not an estimate. Delete a floor and everything updates with a click. That's a different thing entirely from a flat list.
Means and methods for pre-construction
We talk about means and methods in the field all the time. How you plan and execute the physical work matters, and it costs something. The same logic applies to pre-construction. The expertise that goes into a budget isn't free to produce. The relationships, the historical data, the judgment calls, the cost narrative: those are real deliverables that have real value.
None of that means the first phone call should come with an invoice. Early generosity is part of how this industry works, and it should be. But as projects get real, as design development deepens and the questions get more specific, the industry is waking up to the idea that the work deserves to be treated like the professional service it actually is.
The good news: with better tools and an earlier seat at the table, pre-con professionals can deliver more value faster, and have the cost conversation from a position of demonstrated expertise rather than a sprint to catch up.
That's good for builders. Good for owners. Good for the project. And ultimately, it's how more deals get in the ground.
