The #1 Reason Your Immersive Experience Will Go Over Budget

Immersive experiences are everywhere.?

Over-the-top pop-up shops. Interactive entertainment venues. Mind-blowing museum exhibits.?

Consumers crave them. Brands and institutions benefit from them. It’s a win-win.?

When everything goes right.

The reality: These are complex feats of design, technology, engineering, and logistics.?

Coming up with a wild idea is the easy part. Turning that concept into an accurate budget? That’s where it gets tricky.

There will be countless details, decisions, and challenges to address before it’s all said and done. If your initial budget accounts for all of them, you’re in great shape. If not, you’ve got a problem that’s only going to get worse.

Once a project is in full swing, the smallest oversight can trigger a cascade of add-ons, change orders, and other costly surprises. Before you know it, the project isn’t just over budget –?it has to be scaled back.

The #1 cause of this is “Scope Gap.”

Scope gap occurs when a key deliverable, step, or responsibility is overlooked in the budgeting stage. More than a simple oversight, it’s the silent killer of experiential projects.

At Bridgewater Studio , we’ve budgeted, built, and delivered thousands of experiences over the last two decades. Unfortunately, the problem isn’t getting any better. In fact, it’s shocking how many new clients come to us with scope gap horror stories of their own.

In this article, I’ll share the most common causes of scope gap, its impact on projects of all sizes, and how to prevent it... so your next experience is a stress-free success that stays on budget.

Scope Gap: The Silent Killer

So what is “scope gap,” exactly??

It's a term commonly used in the construction industry, where large projects typically involve multiple contractors with overlapping roles and responsibilities. Budgeting for these projects requires accounting for every last detail, but with so many vendors, it’s easy for things to slip through the cracks. When those missing details eventually surface, there isn’t enough budget to cover them. This is scope gap.

In the experiential industry, the similarities are striking.

When brands, museums, cultural heritage institutions, entertainment venues, and other organizations begin budgeting for an experience, there are just as many details to plan, problems to anticipate, and specialists to coordinate.?

Schedules are often tight and budgets ALWAYS are. But unlike construction, there isn’t always a dedicated “GC” overseeing the project. There are countless ways scope gap can creep in when this is the case.?

As a client, the last thing you want once a project is in full swing – is surprises. You don’t want to hear that no one thought of X, Y, or Z. Or that no one knows who’s making sure the necessary electrical is in place. Surprises quickly translate into additional costs thanks to change orders, rush charges, or material substitutions. Quality is often impacted, too… After all, if you’re in a pinch, you can’t afford to be picky.?

Primary Causes of Scope Gap

Willing Blindness

The sad fact is that some experiential marketing companies will intentionally leave out project details to keep bids low. Unethical? Yes. Unheard of? Unfortunately not.?

This dirty tactic of underbidding is carried out knowing clients will be reluctant to walk away from sunk costs later when the budget balloons. This is one reason bids for the same project often vary widely… and it's the reason we always encourage clients to question the lowest bid.

Multiple Vendors

When several vendors are contributing to a project, poor communication and lack of accountability can easily lead to scope gap. For example, a creative agency and its fabrication vendor may both assume the other will secure permits for a retail pop-up.

Limited Experience

Scope gap can also result from working with a creative agency or fabrication shop that doesn’t provide a full spectrum of capabilities in-house. Without creative, design, and production expertise under one roof, a vendor simply can’t anticipate everything that will come up.

Custom Technology

Custom interactive displays, VR, and other immersive technologies are taking the experiential world by storm. By their very nature, tech-driven experiences are filled with complex challenges and unknowns – making them prime targets for scope gap.

The Impact of Scope Gap

Scope gap wreaks havoc on project timelines. Imagine you’re well into fabrication before a missing element is identified on the production schedule. What seems like a minor delay can easily trigger a domino effect if multiple vendors are involved, as each will have their own schedules and priorities. To make matters worse, long lead times on materials and other resources can cripple production and add significant costs.

For quick projects like in-store retail activations, there’s no wiggle room in the schedule. The store must open and the show must go on, whether the experience is ready or not. With these projects, scope gap forces suboptimal decisions to guarantee an on-time launch. Rush charges add unexpected costs. Last-minute substitutions translate into lower-quality materials. Attention to detail goes out the window. In the end, both the experience and the budget are compromised.

Larger initiatives with more flexible timelines, such as museum galleries, can course-correct somewhat, but cascading effects of these oversights often disrupt phased rollout schedules and facility operations. Another insidious factor? The compounding nature of one scope gap can propagate new ones, creating additional headaches in the future.

In short, a scope gap explosively derails timelines, blows out budgets, and leaves the entire project team–from the client to all partners–in an unpleasant situation.

Independent vendors may shrug their shoulders or point fingers. And regardless of who is responsible, the project suffers, making it more difficult to get new experiential projects approved in your organization or company. Nobody is happy.?

How to Avoid Scope Gap

So, how can you proactively identify and prevent scope gap? It all comes down to accurate budgeting at the very beginning. Here’s how to sharpen your numbers:

Submit detailed RFPs

The more details you can provide to potential vendors, the easier it is to compare apples to apples. If they’re not quoting the same deliverables, there are gaps that aren’t being addressed.

Question low-ball bids

I’ve repeatedly warned brands and institutions about this only to have them come back months later, frustrated and well behind schedule because they went the “low-cost” route. Trust me, you’ll end up paying even more in the end.

Anticipate every need from ideation through installation

Only the most experienced partners will identify every blind spot during the budgeting process. A comprehensive knowledge of material costs, engineering constraints, logistical hurdles, and every other detail in the project life cycle is critical but rare.

Consolidate resources

Consolidate as much scope as possible under one umbrella to eliminate gaps while allowing for more versatility and flexibility as your project evolves. Having designers, project managers, fabricators, and other stakeholders in the same room will enable you to leverage combined insight from each area of expertise.

Recap: 6 Tips to Prevent Scope Gaps in Your Next Experience

• Minimize the number of vendors/contractors and 3rd party subcontractors
• Work with an experienced, full-service, fully-integrated design and fabrication partner
• Start with comprehensive scope documentation and explicit deliverables
• Scrutinize low-ball bids
• Engage all specialists to actively search for gaps in the strategy, design, or materials allocations
• Give yourself time. The more time you have upfront, the more options you’ll have to solve potential challenges.?

While it’s easy to focus on the final product, the best experiences are the result of an optimal process. By starting with an accurate budget, you’ll avoid the headaches, stress, and costly surprises that scope gap can create at every step.

Choose an experienced partner who will offer an honest evaluation of your budget, goals, and expectations. One who might not be the cheapest option, but will keep your project on time and on budget, while ensuring you get the most out of every dollar invested.

Seek a partnership founded on genuine teamwork and collaboration. A partner committed to delivering the best possible experience will prioritize the outcome above all else. They will consider the right means and methods, the most cost-effective materials, the appropriate use of technology, and other factors to maximize your budget – and the end result.

At Bridgewater Studio , anticipating challenges and eliminating scope gap is in our DNA. As an end-to-end experiential partner, we take a comprehensive approach to budgeting every project, whether we’re providing one service or all of them – from strategy to design, engineering, technology, production, installation, and support.?

If you’ve got an experience in mind, I’d love to help scope it out.?

Drop me a DM or book a time on my calendar here.