01
What actually controls the schedule
Two things, and neither is framing. The first is permitting, which is outside your control and your builder’s — see the permits hub for the statutory clocks and the measured record.
The second is utility connection. Scheduling a service connection or a sewer tie-in depends on the utility’s calendar, and it can sit on the critical path at the end of a project when everything else is finished.
Our timeline planner asks you to enter each phase separately and sums them, precisely because a single headline duration hides which phase is the risk on your project.
02
On promised completion dates
We do not publish a typical ADU build time as though it were a commitment, and you should treat any site that does with caution.
What we publish is the measured distribution of permit-to-completion durations from California jurisdiction records, with its limits stated. That is a different claim from a promise, and it is the honest one.
03
Change orders
The most common cause of an ADU going over budget is not the original price. It is what is discovered once work starts — a slab that fails, a service that cannot carry the load, a septic system at capacity.
The defense is diligence before signing: the site conditions established early, and a contract that says how a change order is priced and approved before one is needed.