The journey to your new home begins with the Elevated Design Build in-house design department. This is where ideas come together and visions spring to life, all with meticulous attention to detail and a shared commitment to sustainability.
Our extensive experience ensures that every decision made during the design phase is informed and intentional, directly influencing the project budget and outcomes. This is especially valuable when incorporating advanced green building methods or natural materials, allowing us to balance sustainability with practicality. And if changes arise during construction, our team acts swiftly to keep the project on track.
Whether you’re dreaming of a custom home, a high-performance shell, or a striking timber frame structure, having an integrated design team ensures a seamless process from concept to completion. With Elevated, your project isn’t just managed, it’s crafted to exceed your expectations.
As our in-house design team brings your ideas to life, we work closely with you to translate descriptions, photos, and sketches into thoughtful, customized plans. Specializing in homes designed for Colorado’s unique lifestyle, we create spaces that seamlessly integrate with the natural surroundings, featuring outdoor areas positioned to maximize seasonal enjoyment.
Our designs often embrace simple, efficient forms that use natural and rustic materials, incorporating passive solar elements, abundant natural light, and robust enclosures for optimal energy efficiency. Every detail is crafted with care, from styling that’s tailored to your individual taste, to durable assembly techniques that help ensure air-tight enclosures. Your home will be designed to be as enduring as it is beautiful.
At Elevated, we collaborate with specialists who bring deep expertise to the unique characteristics of your project. Their experience and expertise integrate during the design process to ensure all aspects function in sync. Professional services we bring together include:
We understand that your dream home or project must not only reflect your vision but also fit comfortably within your budget. A design that exceeds financial reach can lead to frustration and disappointment, which are outcomes no one wants. That’s why we prioritize creating projects that are as practical as they are beautiful, ensuring every step aligns with your financial goals.
Our approach is grounded in thoughtful planning and open communication, with a transparent budgeting process that guides the project from concept to completion:
Establishing a realistic range to guide the initial design.
Aligning the concept drawings and your financial goals to stay on track.
A detailed, line-item breakdown of all costs to refine the plan.
The final approved figure that paves the way for permitting and construction.
We believe the best projects come from trust and teamwork. By maintaining full transparency, we empower our clients to make informed decisions with confidence.
The outcome? A stunning project that brings your vision to life, completed with precision and care.
Elevated’s design-build process serves as our blueprint for guiding homeowners and owner-builders through the journey of eco-friendly construction with clarity and ease. To build successfully together, it’s essential that everyone shares a clear understanding of the process, expectations, and goals, ensuring seamless collaboration every step of the way.
The initial meeting is an important first step. It is a chance for us to get to know each other, discuss expectations, and talk about the overall goals for the project. We will review the “Design Program,” which is how many beds/baths, other important rooms and features, overall square footage, schedule, and budget range for your project.
With green building, the term means different things to different people. It is important for us to understand the reasoning behind wanting a green home. We will ask your priorities for different areas, such as:
All our projects take into account energy-efficient construction and the use of sustainable materials and construction methods. That’s who we are. Understanding the extent of the importance of these aspects to the homeowner will help us capture the intent of the project and inform its architectural design.
We will want to visit the home site early in the process, as the project location plays a role in the design. For example, features of the land will inform our approach to access, infrastructure, and the form of the building.
While we prefer an in-person meeting, we’ve also had success meeting over the phone and on video calls. If everything goes well and you wish to move forward, we will provide you with a Design + Preconstruction Agreement that defines our responsibility and authorizes us to proceed with the architectural design, preliminary budgeting, and engineering.
There is a lot of information that needs to be gathered and generated before we put a shovel in the ground, and managing it all is often complicated and time consuming. Our process and the relationships we’ve built with other professionals help to make this a more efficient procedure. We charge an hourly fee for performing and coordinating these services and will provide you with a cost estimate based on the size and complexity of your project.
Conceptual Design: Taking ideas from our initial meeting, the Design Questionnaire we’ll have you complete, and inspiration drawings or images, we will translate the input into conceptual floor plans and 3D models. A few design considerations for an energy-efficient, eco-friendly home include:
Conceptual Budget Estimate: We will create a Conceptual Budget Estimate using the Conceptual Design drawings, our historic data for similar projects, and our knowledge/expertise with current industry market trends. This initial budget range is more accurate than cost per square foot, but not yet accurate enough to offer the confidence needed for our client to sign a Construction Contract. This estimate will give us an idea of where the budget may end up and lets us know if we need to make “value engineering” adjustments to the Conceptual Design before investing in the Design Development phase.
Design Development: Once the concept for the home is approved, this phase is where we incorporate notes and technical drawings such as section cuts, elevations, and assembly details. Knowing the energy-efficiency goals and the wall assemblies informs how we detail the construction and sequencing. At this point, we will also need other professionals to provide their input in the form of the topographic survey, soils report, energy model, and others to properly design the foundation and energy systems.
The construction document package is the set of information submitted to obtain a building permit and is subsequently used by all the trades to construct your project as intended. This phase includes a structural analysis performed by a licensed structural engineer, a requirement for every project we undertake.
The structural engineer will use our Design Development drawings to analyze the structural components of the building. The engineer’s job is to verify the structure is safe and will be able to resist the anticipated loads to the building. We will work with the engineer to ensure the structural detailing is harmonious with the aesthetics, functionality, and energy-efficiency goals for the project. Timber framing and natural wall systems are unique construction methods. As such, we will employ structural engineers that are best suited to analyze these types of structures.
This ability to customize our approach adds significant value, ensuring that every aspect of your home is handled with the expertise it deserves.
With the engineer’s approved drawings and our completed architectural design, we will have the full construction document set and be ready to submit a request for a permit.
It is important that we design a project that is affordable for the owner to build. It is a waste of time and money to do otherwise, which could potentially lead to heartbreak and resentment. It is safe to say that isn’t good for anyone. That’s why our budgets include contingencies for the unexpected and a clear projection of the revenue we aim to earn by delivering exceptional results.
With the design of the building well-defined in the drawings, we will move into creating a Preconstruction Planning Package of documents. This set of documents includes:
We work with our trusted trade partners to build the budget and define scopes of work, obtaining multiple bids when appropriate. We then use this information to amend the design (if needed), or proceed into the construction phase of the project. We charge a fixed fee to assemble all of this information, which is every bit as valuable to the success of a project as are the design drawings.
Our goal is a beautiful project and happy clients – the result of successful teamwork. We believe the best way to accomplish this is through full transparency. As such, we include a contingency for unanticipated overruns, as well as the projected revenue we stand to earn by performing our duties effectively.
Note: We can cater the sequencing of the budgeting and engineering components of the process with your priorities. If budget is the priority, then we build an accurate budget estimate before engaging with the engineer. There will be allowances for scopes of work relating to the structural components of the building as we will not yet have the stamped structural plans. If schedule is a priority, then we will engage with the structural engineer concurrently with building the budget estimate. Stacking these tasks typically saves four to eight weeks in the preconstruction timeline.
Once we have completed construction documents and an accurate, approved budget estimate, we will have everything we need to move into the construction phase. We will issue a Construction Contract that defines our duties as your builder, terms of payment, and other legal aspects of our working relationship. Then we are ready to implement the design and planning into physical reality.
Your team of conscientious project managers and craftspeople will take care to ensure that industry best practices are implemented, and the final product achieves the goals set out during the planning phase. Going for Passive House or Net-Zero certification? The installation sequence of the envelope assembly is hugely important to meet air-tightness requirements. Does the house have heavy timber elements? Making sure the timber frame integrates seamlessly with the other structural and finish details makes for flawless execution. These are just a few examples of how our experience and expertise can help make your project sing.
On projects where Elevated is acting as the general contractor, we operate on a cost-plus basis. This means the client reimburses us for the direct costs needed to complete the project plus a fee we collect to cover our overhead and profit. We will provide a link to a client portal for access to the current budget status, construction schedule, and selection items, which may be viewed at any time.
We will also provide weekly updates and monthly meetings so the entire team knows where everything stands. We don’t want to inundate you with the extensive amount of paperwork involved in managing the build process, but at your request, we will provide you with all the invoices and receipts collected to date.
With a building permit issued by the local authority, we are ready to start digging!
Let us help you bring your custom eco-friendly home to life, one artfully crafted step at a time. Contact us to talk about a project. We would love to hear about your ideas.
