A construction company needed to bid on a full custom home build. Instead of a single number, market research turned the bid into a three-tier decision framework — giving the client options grounded in real NJ cost data.
3 tiers
Low, medium, and high scenarios — each data-justified
13 sheets
Architectural drawings used as research inputs
NJ market
Current labor and materials data used for cost calibration
1 deck
Presentation-ready deliverable for client meeting
A friend who runs a construction company was preparing to bid on a custom residential build in Oceanport, NJ — a full new home for a client on Hiawatha Avenue. The project was substantial: two full floors, a crawl space foundation, a two-car garage, four bedrooms, and a range of high-specification finishes throughout.
The standard approach in residential construction is to produce a single number — a bid — based on experience, subcontractor relationships, and an educated read of the drawings. That number either wins or it doesn't. There's no framework, no range, and no transparency about what's driving the cost in either direction.
He asked me to build something better. The research question was straightforward: what does this project actually cost at different quality and specification levels, and can we present that as a defensible, client-ready framework rather than a single take-it-or-leave-it number?
The first step was a thorough read of the architectural drawings — all 13 sheets — not as a builder would read them, but as a researcher would. I was looking for the cost-driving decisions embedded in the design: structural complexity, material specifications, finish levels, mechanical requirements, and anything that would behave differently at different budget points.
A custom home of this scale has hundreds of individual line items. The research task was identifying which variables had the most leverage — where the gap between a low-end and high-end decision was largest — and organizing the entire project around those fulcrum points.
| Research input | What I was looking for |
|---|---|
| Architectural drawings (13 sheets) | Square footage, structural system, room count, finish areas, mechanical complexity |
| Foundation and framing plans | Crawl space vs. slab decisions, LVL beam specifications, TJI joist grades |
| Electrical and reflected ceiling plans | Fixture density, special circuits, panel requirements |
| Window and door schedules | Unit count, Andersen series specifications, glazing requirements |
| NJ market rate data | Current labor costs by trade, materials pricing, Shore-area market premiums |
With the drawings fully mapped and the key cost variables identified, I pulled current NJ market rate data — labor costs by trade, materials pricing at different specification levels, and relevant Monmouth County / Shore-area market premiums. The NJ construction market has specific dynamics that differ from state averages: labor rates, permit costs, and material availability all reflect a regional context that a generic estimating tool won't capture.
The three-tier model was built around a consistent set of scope assumptions with variation at the specification level — the same house, built three ways, with clear documentation of what changes between tiers and why.
The core output was a three-tier cost model. Each tier represented a coherent, internally consistent approach to building the project — not a set of arbitrary cuts to a single number, but three distinct specification philosophies with their own logic.
Tier 1 — Low
Code-compliant, market-standard
All work meets NJ code. Materials at builder-grade specification. Subcontractors selected on price. Finishes at the lower end of what the drawings specify as acceptable. Appropriate for a competitive bid where margin is the priority.
Tier 2 — Medium
Quality-spec, relationship build
Mid-grade materials throughout. Preferred subcontractors. Finish selections at the midpoint of the specified ranges. Balances quality and cost in a way that protects the contractor's reputation and gives the client a livable result without premium pricing.
Tier 3 — High
Full-spec, premium execution
Top-of-range material selections throughout. Best-in-market subcontractors. All optional upgrades included. Appropriate for a client who wants a fully realized version of what the architect designed, with no value-engineering compromises.
A single bid number is a guess dressed up as a quote. A three-tier framework is a research-backed conversation.
The goal was to give the contractor a tool for a client meeting, not just a number to email over.
Each tier included a line-item breakdown by trade category — foundation, framing, roofing, exterior, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, interior finishes — with the specific specification decisions documented at each level. This made the differences between tiers legible and defensible, not just a percentage adjustment applied to a black-box total.
The research also surfaced several cost concentration points specific to this project: the LVL ridge and PSL beam specifications in the framing plan, the Andersen window schedule with 27 units across multiple series, and the crawl space foundation approach all carried meaningful cost implications that weren't immediately obvious from a surface read of the drawings.
The deliverable was a presentation-ready deck structured for a client meeting — not a spreadsheet to hand across a desk, but a document that walked through the project, explained the cost logic, and presented the three tiers as a decision framework for the client rather than a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
That distinction matters in construction. A contractor who walks into a meeting with three scenarios and the research behind each one is having a fundamentally different conversation than one who walks in with a number. It positions them as an advisor rather than just a bidder — someone who has done the work to understand the project and can help the client make an informed decision about where they want to land.
Why this belongs in a UX research portfolio: Research methods transfer across domains. The skills applied here — document analysis, market research, synthesis into decision frameworks, communication of findings to a non-expert audience — are the same skills applied to user research. The domain is different. The methodology is not. A researcher who can only work in one industry is a less valuable researcher.
The construction project is included here deliberately. It demonstrates that research thinking — the discipline of grounding decisions in evidence rather than instinct, and of presenting findings in a way that the audience can act on — is not domain-specific. It is a way of approaching problems.
In the same way that a UV sensor study in Florida ultimately reshaped a consumer product category, a careful read of a set of architectural drawings can reshape how a contractor competes for work. The context changes. The core practice doesn't.