OK, I see I need to clarify as people are not understanding what I meant (probably as I was deliberately vague). I tried to not identify the business, but that seems to have led to confusion.
I hired an architectural firm to design a house for me. I told them the budget for the project. They designed a house that would take 2x my budget to build. The architect said he thought it would cost 2.5 times my budget to build. I just got one bid from a contractor friend, but the architect thought it was lower than expected (though of course he said he "hoped it would come in close to budget, seeing as the contractor was a friend"). Did he think contractors don't need to eat? Just the raw materials were over budget not including any contractor labor.
The contract with the architectural firm was to have them design the house. I was utterly shocked when the house came in at twice budget, and even more shocked when the architect said he thought it would cost more.
I have heard of another customer of the same firm having a similar experience and abandoning the project when that happened (or abandoning it with them and moving onto a different architect). I moved on to a contractor with architectural software and am quite happy with both the design and the cost now. I went to an architect because I thought that is how one designed houses, but have learned it is just the most expensive way to design houses (the design was actually my own).
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