Having an accurate budget for a construction project is a tricky business. During the early, estimating stage, a company wants to give an accurate representation of how much a project will cost, while adding some padding for the inevitable contingencies. Bid too high and you don’t get the job; bid too low and the project will surely go over budget very quickly, and you will gain a reputation of not being very good. Experienced contractors know how to come up with a good initial budget. Keeping an eye on that budget then becomes crucial during the life of the project.

Why do projects go over budget? There may be several reasons, but let’s focus on some of the most common.

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It is going back about 26 years now since I had a conversation with a client of mine about why it was so hard to make the simplest change to the software that I was developing for him.  After all, he only wanted a few “little” things on the screen changed, so he couldn’t understand how it could be so difficult.

So, I started to explain to him about data and tables and memory variables, etc., none of which resonated with him.  He still didn’t see how it could possibly take so long to do so little.

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