Fifty years at the same permit counter

There is a particular kind of knowledge that only comes from doing the same thing in the same city for a very long time, and it is almost impossible to describe without sounding like a slogan. So here is the specific version.

It is knowing, when you look at a set of sketches, which two lines the Planning Department will object to — and which one of those two the client actually cares about, so you can suggest giving up the other. It is knowing that a particular block has a neighbour who reads every notification. It is knowing what the building at that address is likely to be sitting on, because you have opened up three others on the same street.

None of that is carpentry, and none of it is on a certificate. It is the difference between a project that takes eighteen months and the same project taking twenty-seven, and it is worth more to an owner than anything else a builder brings.

What the company is

A general building and engineering contractor, working in residential construction under NAICS 236116. The work is new residential construction, additions, accessory dwelling units and guest houses, modular and manufactured housing, remodeling, and structural repair — in San Francisco and across the Bay Area.

It is woman-owned and family-operated, and it has been trading in this city since 1973. Both of those are published because the company publishes them and because both can be verified.

How we work

The schedule comes before the price. On a first call the most useful thing we can tell you is which approval path your project is on and roughly how long it is, because that decides whether the project is worth starting at all. The price conversation is second, and it is easier once the first one is honest.

We name the risk before it happens. Discretionary review, a ceiling height that is two inches short, a foundation that is redwood on soil, a tenant who cannot accommodate the sequence. Every one of those is on this website with a number attached, because a builder who tells you about them at the start is the one who has seen them before.

Allowances instead of pretending. An estimate for work on a hundred-year-old building with no allowances in it is not more confident, it is less honest. We say which lines are firm and which are allowances, and what each allowance is based on.

Bring us in at the sketch stage. The cheapest conversation on any of these projects is the one where somebody who has been through Planning two hundred times looks at a drawing while it is still cheap to change. It costs nothing and it has more leverage than anything that happens afterwards.

Who we build for

Homeowners adding to or retrofitting an old house. Small multifamily owners doing unit-by-unit work or complying with the soft-storey programme. Architects and designers who need a builder that can price a set honestly at schematic and flag what Planning will object to before it is drawn. And people who have just bought an old San Francisco house and discovered what is actually holding it up.

All four are asking the same question in different words: how long, how much, and what will go wrong. This entire website is an attempt to answer those three before you have to ask.