Project: a firm quote, after the framing and never before

It is the practice of the market and it suits everybody at the time. The supplier prices quickly to stay in the race, the client compares amounts, and the project starts on a scope nobody has written down.

What follows is familiar. The quote was low, so the scope tightens along the way. Or the quote was high to cover the uncertainty, and you paid for that uncertainty. In both cases, the discussion moves to variation orders.

We do the opposite: a short paid framing phase first, a firm quote afterwards. And the framing is deducted if the project goes ahead, which means it costs you nothing if you see it through.

Two to three weeks, €1,800, deducted from the project if it goes ahead. It is the most debated point of this plan, so it is worth explaining.

What it produces

• The structural decisions settled, the ones that are expensive to change later: who will publish, which platform, which connections, what organisation after delivery.
• A written scope, with the list of what will be done and the list of what will not. The second is the one that protects the project.
• A firm quote, and a roadmap you can execute.

Why we charge for it

Because a free framing phase is a rushed one. The work is real: workshops, analysis of what exists, decisions, writing. Charging for it guarantees it is done seriously on both sides, and it filters out enquiries that will go nowhere.

Why we deduct it

Because it is not a separate service, it is the first stage of the project. If you see it through, it has cost you nothing. If you do not, you leave with a usable document, usable by another supplier too, and that is accepted.

What sometimes happens, and which we prefer

The framing concludes that the project is not worth doing, or that a smaller piece of work is enough. That is a good result: it has saved you a budget far larger than €1,800.

In fortnightly sprints, with a deliverable each time. That is not a methodological preference, it is a protection.

Why fifteen days

A project that shows nothing for two months has no way of knowing it is drifting, and discovers the gap at the point where it costs most to correct. A deliverable every fortnight makes drift visible while it is still repairable.

The corollary is that you will see imperfect versions early. That is normal, not an alarm signal.

The team

A squad of three to five specialists, assembled for your project, with a single contact who carries it end to end. You do not explain the same thing three times.

On delivery

Go-live, handover of skills and documentation. Then a follow-up subscription is offered, not imposed: a project delivered and left alone decays within months, but it is your decision and it is taken in full knowledge.

What makes a project slip

Three causes, and none is technical. A decision waiting for a meeting that is never scheduled. A scope reopened without the deadline being reopened too. And content that does not arrive. We flag all three the moment they appear, rather than absorbing them until delivery.

From €8,000, and the firm quote comes out of the framing. Here is the breakdown, so a comparison with another quote is possible.

Always included

• The framing and its decisions, deducted from the project.
• The design of the templates, which is the real work.
• The build, the launch and the redirects from what exists.
• Handover to your team and the documentation for taking it over.

Costed separately, and why

Writing the content, because it depends on who takes it on and because it is almost always the critical path. Photographs and illustrations, because a shoot on site has nothing to do with a stock library. Connections to your business tools, because a CRM integration is a project in itself.

We take them out of the package deliberately. Including them would allow a rounder price, at the cost of a decision you would never see being made.

The variable that makes the price

It is not the number of pages or screens, it is the number of different templates and the number of connections to establish. It is also the simplest lever for adjusting a budget without degrading the result.

This plan covers pieces of work that have a beginning and an end.

What we deliver in this format

• A website rebuild or new build, showcase or commercial.
• An application development, to validate a product with real users.
• An internal business platform, when a spreadsheet is no longer enough.
• An automation project, with its mapping and its flows.

It is not for you if

Your need is a continuous flow of small requests: the Partner plan answers that better, and for less than a succession of quotes. Or your need is a simple site to keep alive without thinking about it: that is Presence.

And if you do not know yet

That is common, and it is exactly what our audits are for. Each starts with a thirty-minute diagnosis, free of charge, and produces a list of problems ranked by cost with an order of treatment. It is often the best first step when nothing has yet been measured.

They recur from one project to the next, and the framing exists precisely to deal with them before they cost anything.

1. Confusing the number of pages with the number of templates

It is the most frequent mistake, on both sides. Three hundred pages built on five models cost less than eight pages that are all different, because the work is in the model, not in filling it.

A quote priced by the number of pages is therefore either too expensive or unsustainable. It is the first thing we look at, and it is also the simplest lever for adjusting a budget without degrading the result.

2. Treating the content as a detail

On most projects, the critical path is not the build, it is producing the copy and the visuals. A technically finished job waits six weeks for content, and everybody blames everybody else.

So the framing settles explicitly who writes, when, and what happens if the content does not arrive. That is not a defensive clause, it is what makes a deadline possible.

3. Discovering the connections along the way

“It will also have to feed into the management software.” That sentence, spoken in week six, turns one project into two. An integration with a business tool is a piece of work in itself, with its own unknowns, and it is sometimes found to be closed.

So during framing we list every tool to be connected and we check what it actually allows, rather than assuming. When a connection is not possible by standard means, it is better to know before signing.

What these three mistakes have in common

None is technical, and all are expensive because they are discovered late. That is exactly what €1,800 and two weeks allow you to avoid, and it is why the firm quote comes afterwards, never before.