Why We Don't Guess: 15+ Years of Real Installed-Cost Data

Ask three contractors what a rainscreen facade costs per square foot and you'll get three numbers — and usually none of them can tell you why.

We can. Since 2010, Nexen Construction has documented every exterior project we've touched: over 280 job sites, 164 cities and towns, 12 states, and more than 53,000 job-site photographs. Every panel course, every flashing detail, every substrate condition, every change order. That archive isn't a scrapbook — it's a dataset.

What "real data" means on an exterior project

When we budget a Nichiha fiber-cement facade, we're not applying a rule of thumb. We're comparing your wall assembly against dozens of completed installations with the same panel series, the same clip system, the same wall heights, in the same labor market.

That's the difference between a guess and a number:

• Substrate reality. Sheathing condition and framing tolerances drive labor more than panel price does. We've measured that across hundreds of walls.
• Detail density. A wall with twelve penetrations and three material transitions doesn't price like a clean field wall. Our historical data tells us exactly how much slower those walls install.
• Regional labor. A crew-day in State College doesn't cost what a crew-day in northern New Jersey costs. We've run crews in both — for years.

Why this matters to owners and GCs

A budget that's wrong in either direction hurts you. Too high, and good projects die in feasibility. Too low, and you're negotiating change orders with a half-clad building. The only cure is installed-cost history — real quantities, real crew hours, real closeout numbers.

We are the best at what we do because we don't guess. We measure, we document, and we've been doing it on every project for over fifteen years.

If you're budgeting an exterior package — fiber cement, EIFS, metal composite panels, stone veneer, or stucco — send us the drawings. You'll get a number backed by the largest private installed-cost archive in our region.