Irvine Construction Estimating Services

Most estimates lose money before anybody swings a hammer.

Not on the takeoff. On the stuff around the takeoff. Schedule, fees, review time, the agencies you didn’t know were in the chain.

Irvine is a good example. The City publishes its plan review times in working days, and they’re not one number. A standard tenant improvement gets 5 working days on first review. The same drawing set gets 10 working days if the suite is in the Irvine Business Complex, or if the space is 15,000 square feet or bigger. New commercial or industrial under four stories is 20 working days. Four stories and up is 25. Rechecks run another 5 or 10.

Read that again. Same scope. Same drawings. Double the first review, because of an address and a square footage number.

That’s not a construction cost. That’s general conditions, supervision, and a schedule you either priced or didn’t. We’ve seen guys eat six figures on that alone.

Then there’s fire. Irvine doesn’t have a city fire department doing your plan review. The Orange County Fire Authority does, on its own adopted fee schedule. Tying a tenant improvement into an existing sprinkler system runs $459 for 25 heads or fewer, $648 for 26 to 99, and $938 once you’re at 100 heads or more. A new NFPA 13 system with one riser is $902 under 100 heads and $995 over. Every extra riser, or every floor above three stories, adds $437. Fire alarm plan review starts at $428 and climbs to $1,545 once you’re past 30 initiating devices or 80 notification devices. Underground fire service is $684 for the first hydrant or riser connection and $197 for each one after that.

None of that is in your unit prices. All of it is in your bid.

And it stacks. A mid-size Irvine tenant improvement can pick up a sprinkler tie-in review, an alarm review, and an underground connection before you’ve priced a single sheet of drywall. That’s a couple thousand dollars in fees and two agencies on your critical path. Miss it once and you’re covering it out of profit.

1. The Irvine Business Complex rule. If your project is in the IBC, or 15,000 square feet or larger, your first plan check is 10 working days instead of 5. The City even runs a separate counter line for IBC questions. If you bid the IBC on a standard TI schedule, you’re going to hand back the float you thought you had.

2. Fire review is a second agency with a second price list. OCFA reviews and bills separately from the City. That’s a real number, it’s public, and it belongs in your general conditions instead of your gut.

3. School facilities fees have to be paid before the permit issues, and they’re paid to the district, not the City. Irvine Unified is $4.76 per square foot residential and $0.61 per square foot commercial or industrial. Tustin Unified and Saddleback Valley are $3.79 and $0.61. Santa Ana Unified is $3.48 and $0.56. You bring the district’s certificate to the City. Residential under 500 square feet is exempt.

4. Impact fees. Irvine’s 2025 nexus study puts the maximum justified residential fee at $5.34 per square foot and a hotel room at $4,184. On a 200-room hotel that’s over $800,000 before you’ve bought a stick of lumber.

Everything is electronic now, too. Irvine takes permit applications online only. That’s fine. It also means a missing sheet is a full recheck cycle, and a recheck is another 5 or 10 working days.

We don’t do stock photos and made-up case studies. Here’s the book. Every one of these is a real estimate out of our files, and you can open the document.

Full projects:

1. City of Irvine Project, zip 92612 — $11.6M. Twenty pages, eleven divisions, General Conditions through Electrical. 2. Road House Hotel, Anaheim, zip 92802 — $2.3M. 3. 2509 S Broadway, Santa Ana, zip 92707 — $2.2M. 4. Boiling Crab, Brea, zip 92821 — $1.4M.

Retail and restaurant build-outs:

1. GAP Irvine Spectrum Center Project, zip 92618 — $254K, a drywall and framing package. 2. Dutch Bros CA7301, Santa Ana, zip 92705 — $238K. 3. Lululemon Huntington Beach, zip 92648 — $154K. 4. Ulta, Anaheim, zip 92808 — $137K.

Tenant improvements and renovations:

1. Laguna Hills Plaza Improvement, zip 92653 — $1.2M. 2. San Clemente CH, zip 92673 — $757K. 3. Valencia Drive, Fullerton, zip 92832 — $503K. 4. Pause Tenant Improvement, Newport Beach, zip 92660 — $153K.

Across those documents we’ve priced General Conditions, sitework and demolition, concrete, masonry, metals, rough carpentry, insulation, doors and windows, finishes, specialties, equipment, mechanical and plumbing, and electrical. Drywall, framing, acoustical ceiling, tile and epoxy flooring, paint. Ground-up work and interior fit-outs.

I’m Daniel. I founded I AM Builders. Since 2016 we’ve estimated over $12 billion in projects and worked with over 3,500 contractors.

Two of these estimates sit inside Irvine city limits, and they’re the two ends of the market.

92612 is west Irvine — the Irvine Business Complex and the airport area, running up to the UCI edge. That’s where the $11.6M City of Irvine Project lives. Eleven divisions. It’s the one that shows what a full build looks like when we price it.

92618 is southeast Irvine — Irvine Spectrum and the Great Park side. That’s the GAP Irvine Spectrum Center Project at $254K. Mall tenant work, drywall and framing, landlord schedule.

The rest of the book is the ring around Irvine, and it’s the same crews and the same landlords.

92660 is Newport Beach, the Newport Center and Fashion Island side, right next door. That’s the Pause Tenant Improvement at $153K. 92705 is east Santa Ana and North Tustin on Irvine’s western edge, where Dutch Bros CA7301 sits at $238K. 92707 is south Santa Ana toward South Coast Metro — 2509 S Broadway, $2.2M.

North county: 92802 is the Anaheim resort district, where the Road House Hotel priced at $2.3M. 92808 is Anaheim Hills, where the Ulta came in at $137K. 92821 is Brea, where Boiling Crab was $1.4M. 92832 is downtown Fullerton, the Valencia Drive job at $503K.

Coast and south county: 92648 is downtown Huntington Beach, where the Lululemon was $154K. 92653 is Laguna Hills, the Plaza Improvement at $1.2M. 92673 is San Clemente, the CH job at $757K.

That’s the map. Twelve documents, twelve zip codes, one county.

General contractors bidding Irvine work who don’t want a full-time estimator on payroll. Subs who need a takeoff that holds up when the GC starts pulling on it. Developers and tenants who need a real number before they sign a lease.

If you’re bidding an Irvine tenant improvement and you priced it on somebody else’s spreadsheet from a different city, you’re going to find out what the difference costs on the back end.

Our Irvine construction estimating services are built the same way those twelve documents are built. Line by line, division by division, with the quantities showing so you can check us. You get a cost estimator who works on your bid, not a template with your name at the top.

Send us the plans. We’ll tell you what it costs.