Infrastructure cost questions you must ask, never answer

1 · Learn the move · Multi-persona

The split that pencils on paper usually dies in the ground: the water main is further than it looked, the road needs work before the county will take more driveways, a third of the lots do not perc. A model asked about any of that will give you a per-foot cost for a water extension or a typical price for a septic system, and that number will quietly become your budget. The discipline is to ask and never answer. Multi-persona is the tool for asking well. Have the model take the seats of the people who will actually review the site - the civil engineer, the water district, the road department, the health department - and write only the questions each would ask of your documents. Then merge them into one list ordered by what ends the idea fastest, with who answers and what form the answer arrives in. No persona estimates a cost, a distance or a capacity. Those arrive as written quotes and letters, or not at all.

Take four seats in turn: civil engineer, water district engineer, county road department, county health department. In each, read my documents and write only the questions that reviewer would ask. No answers, no costs, no distances, no capacities. Then merge them into one list ordered by what ends the idea fastest: question, who answers, what form the answer comes in.