Save on Church Design Using Pre-developed Plans

Churches can save 50% or more on the cost of church design services by utilizing church building plans from previous building projects. Churches today have the option of buying existing plans from church architects at huge savings over custom designed plans. While options like this have been around for several years, this is a concept that is just coming into its own.

For a brief explanation of why church design costs are often unnecessarily high, see this explanation on this church architect’s web site. The long and short of it is that architects often price church design projects as if they were doing all the work from scratch, when in many cases, they are taking plans from previous projects and, due to the wonders of Computer Aided Design (CAD) they are able to make changes and save the revisions without having to do everything from scratch.

Several firms now offer stock church plans for as low as $5,000, but don’t think this is going to be the total cost of your church design. While these are wonderful prices and will save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in design, any set of stock plans will need to be modified to meet local, state and federal building codes. Changes to the floor plan to alter the layout to the churches desires will also add to the cost, however, with all these changes, the church can expect to save 50-80% over the cost of custom plans.

Stock church plans will certainly not include site plans or civil engineering; and what is offered for the price varies from firm to firm. For instance, as of this writing, both DigitalChurchPlans.com and ChurchPlansforLess.com offer as-is, uncertified plans with prices starting at little as $2,995 while ChurchDevelopment.com offers plans that are customized to the churches specifications and approved through the permitting process for a cost that is significantly less of customized building plans. With the uncertified plans, the church purchases the building plans and has the them modified to their needs, either by a local architect or the firm providing the plans.

In addition to saving huge amounts of money in the design process, the church will save weeks or months in the design process. The as-is, uncertified plans offer an additional benefit in that the church can submit plans to contractors for bids much earlier in the process and for a much lower investment in time and money. This is especially important as most churches underestimate the cost of construction, so getting a price based on actual plans that are very similar to what will actually be built will give the church a reality check before they spend (typically) tens of thousands of dollars on plans that they cannot afford to build.

For information on a service that will take the church’s building needs and search all available sources of existing plans, I offer a church building plan search.