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Universities can improve cost certainty by making four management choices before design and construction decisions become expensive to reverse: involve representative users in future-focused programming, build a market-validated budget, reserve time to reconcile estimates at each design phase, and choose a design team that has delivered comparable work on budget and on schedule. These practices, recommended by Zachary Zettler, AIA, Principal and Director of Higher Education at GBBN, are ways to reduce avoidable surprises—not a guarantee that a project will meet a fixed price.
The December 17, 2025, Building Design + Construction article carrying Zettler’s recommendations describes a market in which ordinary campus budgeting is under strain. It quotes him: “One certainty in this changing landscape? Business-as-usual budgeting for campus capital projects is no longer a viable option.” The practical response is to make assumptions visible, test them early, and give the team scheduled opportunities to correct course.
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Why higher-education project budgets are harder to predict
Campus projects combine long planning horizons, many decision-makers, specialized spaces, and public or donor scrutiny. A budget established before the institution has agreed on outcomes can be technically precise yet fundamentally unrealistic. Later attempts to close the gap usually remove area, quality, or functionality after those choices have become politically and operationally difficult.
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Zettler’s article reports that projected four-year college enrollment could shrink by as much as 15% from 2025 to 2029 outside the Southeast, while the Southeast was reported at a 3% increase. Those are projections quoted by the 2025 article, not a claim that the change has already occurred or that every institution will experience it. The same article says construction costs have increased nearly 20% since 2019; the underlying index and full geographic scope were not independently established in the article’s account. Together, the figures illustrate why a historical cost-per-square-foot assumption is a weak stand-in for a current, institution-specific budget.
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The objective is not to predict a single number too early. It is to create a decision process that exposes uncertainty while the institution still has options.
1. Engage users before the program and budget harden
User involvement is most valuable before the institution fixes the area, room list, performance requirements, and budget. Zettler recommends a small, representative planning group that can make decisions, supported by broader input from people who will teach, work, study, maintain, and visit the facility.
Form a representative core group
Include deans, department administrators, facilities representatives, and end users rather than relying on a single senior sponsor. Give the group a written mandate: define measurable objectives, identify non-negotiable outcomes, and rank preferences. Leadership from the institution and affected departments should agree on those objectives before the budget is treated as settled.
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Use surveys and interviews to identify patterns, then use facilitated workshops to resolve conflicts. Virtual or augmented-reality walkthroughs can help people who cannot attend every meeting understand scale, adjacencies, and circulation. The core group should translate the input into requirements that can be tested, not an unranked wish list.
Ask future-oriented questions
- What teaching, research, clinical, or student-support activities must the building enable five to ten years after opening?
- Which spaces need to change rapidly as pedagogy, enrollment, or technology changes?
- What operational constraints—maintenance access, security, scheduling, or staffing—could make an apparently efficient plan expensive to run?
- Which outcomes are essential, and which are desirable only if funds remain?
Looking at peer institutions can reveal alternative ways to achieve an outcome, but a peer building should not be copied without checking differences in mission, climate, operations, and enrollment.
Compare good, better, and best program options
Presenting graduated options makes trade-offs explicit before schematic design. Each option should be described by outcomes as well as area and finishes.
| Comparison | Good | Better | Best |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope and user outcome | Meets core functional requirements | Adds priority capabilities or flexibility | Provides the fullest stated experience |
| Initial project cost | Estimate established for the smaller scope | Estimate established for the expanded scope | Estimate established for the highest scope |
| Life-cycle cost | Operating and renewal implications identified | Implications compared with the good option | Implications compared with both lower options |
| Predicted energy use intensity | Target and modeling assumption stated | Target and modeling assumption stated | Target and modeling assumption stated |
| Institutional alignment | Supports the most critical priorities | Supports additional ranked priorities | Supports the complete priority set if affordable |
Including predicted energy use intensity and other life-cycle costs prevents a low first cost from being mistaken for the lowest total cost. The comparison should show what each option buys, what it gives up, and which assumptions would change its price.
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An achievable budget starts with the program the institution has approved, not an arbitrary area multiplied by a familiar rate. Zettler cautions that traditional cost-per-square-foot models can miss rapid market movement and project-specific complexity.
Make the budget assumptions visible
At minimum, document the estimate date, location, escalation assumption, project scope, quality level, exclusions, and allowances. Separate construction cost from design fees, permitting, furnishings and equipment, technology, commissioning, land or enabling work, financing, and other institution-specific items so that a later scope change does not look like unexplained inflation.
Use escalation and contingencies deliberately
Escalation should match the anticipated procurement and construction dates rather than a generic annual percentage. Design contingency covers unknowns that normally resolve as drawings develop; construction contingency addresses conditions or changes that remain after bid. The team should state who controls each contingency and the approval required to spend it.
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Validate against current market evidence
Have an independent estimator or construction manager test quantities, labor assumptions, material pricing, escalation, and local trade capacity. Validation is more useful when the reviewer explains the drivers of a variance instead of simply replacing one total with another. A university can then decide whether to change scope, timing, delivery method, or risk allocation.
Apply Target Value Design to specific drivers
Zettler describes Target Value Design as organizing costs by systems or materials, comparing them with similar projects and real market data, and managing the drivers that matter. The method is not an across-the-board quality cut. For example, the team might compare structural spans, façade systems, mechanical strategies, or specialty finishes while preserving the user outcome that made the choice important.
| Budget control question | Useful evidence | Decision if the answer is unfavorable |
|---|---|---|
| Is the quantity or performance requirement clear? | Program statement, room data, and performance criteria | Clarify the requirement before pricing it |
| Does the price reflect today’s market? | Current bids, estimator data, trade feedback, and comparable projects | Reprice, alter procurement timing, or revise the system |
| Is the allowance hiding a major risk? | Scope narrative and basis-of-estimate notes | Define the scope or increase an explicitly governed contingency |
| Does a cheaper system create higher operating cost? | Life-cycle analysis and predicted energy use intensity | Compare total cost before selecting the initial-cost winner |
Zettler’s warning is direct: “If the initial budget isn’t achievable from the start, it can lead to painful cuts later that compromise project vision.” Treat that statement as the author’s advice, not as a measured universal outcome.
3. Protect time to estimate and reconcile at every design phase
Estimating is a control activity, not paperwork added after design. Zettler argues that compressed schedules often sacrifice the estimating window, allowing scope gaps, quality mismatches, and budget growth to surface downstream when corrections are more disruptive.
Set reconciliation gates in the schedule
At each agreed design milestone, schedule time for the estimator, architect, engineers, users, and owner to compare the current documents with the approved program and budget.
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- Needs assessment and programming: confirm that the rooms, adjacencies, performance targets, and operational assumptions are complete enough to price.
- Schematic design: reconcile area, structural and mechanical concepts, envelope approach, quality level, and escalation.
- Design development: price the selected systems and materials, identify unresolved details, and assign owners to corrective actions.
- Construction documents: complete a final scope and estimate check before bidding, including alternates, allowances, and contingency status.
If the overall completion date cannot move, the team can adjust other phases or consider multiple release packages, provided the owner understands the coordination and procurement risks. The recommendation to preserve reconciliation time belongs to Zettler’s article; it is not a universal phase rule.
Record the reason for every variance
A useful reconciliation log distinguishes area growth, program change, design development, market escalation, quantity error, and estimate methodology. For each variance, record the amount, responsible decision-maker, required action, and date by which the action must be resolved. A falling total is not automatically good news if it results from omitted scope.
Use an institutional process as a reference, not a mandate
The University of Nebraska’s official capital-project planning page illustrates one workable sequence: concept, needs assessment, an early estimate, programming, a formal program statement, and approval. It describes early estimating as a way to explore general requirements, sizing, implications, and projected costs, with university staff and/or outside consultants working with project originators and campus planning. Programming includes requisite stakeholders, committee input, and a finalized program statement. Other institutions may organize approvals differently, but the example shows why estimating belongs near the beginning as well as later in design.
Symptoms that the schedule has under-protected estimating
- The estimate is issued after a milestone decision has already been made.
- Users see a quality or performance change for the first time during value engineering.
- Allowances remain broad while the team is making detailed selections.
- Scope gaps are discovered only when trade pricing arrives.
- No named person is responsible for closing an estimate variance.
4. Select a team that has delivered comparable work economically
Lowest fee is an incomplete selection criterion for a complex campus project. Zettler recommends looking for a record of on-budget, on-time delivery and evidence that the team can protect the intended quality through creative problem-solving.
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Evaluate evidence, not slogans
| Evaluation area | Questions to ask during selection |
|---|---|
| Higher-education experience | Has the team delivered facilities with comparable users, approvals, technical systems, and operating constraints? |
| Budget and schedule record | Can it show original, reconciled, and final costs and explain major variances, as well as planned and actual milestones? |
| Estimate documentation | Are assumptions, exclusions, contingencies, escalation, and reconciliation actions easy to audit? |
| User responsiveness | How does the team turn competing user requests into ranked, measurable decisions? |
| Market and trade relationships | Will estimators and designers obtain current feedback from contractors, fabricators, and specialty trades? |
| Cost-saving creativity | Can the team show a specific change that preserved performance or appearance while reducing cost? |
Ask for references who can discuss how bad news was surfaced, not only how the finished building looked. A team that reports a variance early gives the owner more choices than one that protects a milestone presentation by postponing the problem.
Best Value
What the Cincinnati examples illustrate
The article reports that, on a University of Cincinnati dining renovation, collaboration with fabricators to optimize milling of custom feature-wall panels generated six-figure savings while retaining the desired appearance and technical standards. It also describes a University of Cincinnati Digital Futures facility in which students participated in a design competition and panel fabrication. These are author-reported examples, not independently audited results or promises that another project will achieve similar savings. Their practical lesson is to involve the people who understand fabrication and delivery early enough to redesign a costly detail without abandoning the user outcome.
How to turn the four strategies into one governance routine
The strategies reinforce one another when the owner treats program, budget, schedule, and team selection as a single control system.
- Authorize a decision group: name the institutional sponsor, user representatives, facilities lead, estimator, and design-team decision rights.
- Approve measurable outcomes: record functional, operational, energy, schedule, and quality objectives before fixing the project budget.
- Price options: compare good, better, and best scopes using initial cost, life-cycle cost, predicted energy use intensity, and institutional priorities.
- Validate the baseline: obtain market feedback and an independent estimate review; document escalation, contingencies, exclusions, and allowances.
- Program reconciliation gates: put estimate reviews on the critical path at concept, programming, schematic design, design development, and pre-bid stages.
- Close variances visibly: maintain a log that ties every change to a decision, owner, amount, and deadline.
- Select for delivery behavior: evaluate comparable project evidence, transparent estimating, user collaboration, and trade-partner problem-solving alongside fee.
This routine does not eliminate inflation, labor shortages, design changes, or unforeseen conditions. It gives the institution earlier information and more lawful, operationally defensible choices before those risks become expensive commitments.
Questions project teams commonly ask
When should users be involved in a university building project?
Begin before the budget and scope are fixed. A representative core group should define measurable objectives, while surveys, interviews, and walkthroughs broaden input before programming decisions become difficult to change.
What is Target Value Design in this context?
It is a way to organize costs by systems or materials, compare them with comparable projects and current market information, and address particular cost drivers. It is different from applying an indiscriminate quality or area cut.
How often should a construction estimate be reconciled during design?
Zettler’s recommendation is to protect a reconciliation window at each successive design phase. The exact milestones should be set in the project schedule; the University of Nebraska sequence is an institutional example, not a universal standard.
Do the reported enrollment and cost figures predict every campus’s future?
No. The 2025 article attributes the projected enrollment changes and the nearly 20% construction-cost increase since 2019 to its cited market context. The figures should be tested against the institution’s geography, timing, project type, and current estimator or construction-manager data.
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