Ed,
Sorry I didn't see this earlier.
Out of 46 courses designed, about 10% have had minimal site visits from me - much to my chagrin. Its for several reasons - and these haven't all happened to me, but it could be (please excuse mild sarcasm in a few answers.....)
Owner thinks hes an architect, and doesn't want the gca in the way, - hey, its his baby......
Owner is the contractor in a design-build arrangement and doesn't want the gca in the way (and probably has enough experience to know what he wants)
Owner is a management company with and experienced in house construction admin team - this can be the best arrangement, as my time is devoted strictly to artistic issues, and it can be the worst - the maintenance supervisors redo things in the name of making skinny maintenance budgets work. However, they take over much of the paper work, and believe me, on some jobs, the paper work and meetings of construction admin takes up far too much time.
Owner is on a low budget and thinks cutting back gca field time amounts to signifigant savings.
Owner is building a "functional" course, and everyone knows up front that the exact placement of any feature, or even its very nature isn't very important in the big scheme of things. Think Ross paper plans here.
Owner is on tight schedule, and doesn't want gca to delay him, or gca just can't get there on a timely basis.
Owner has delayed schedule, and gca has moved on to other projects, expecting normal weather, or fewer delays, limiting time on that project.
In rare cases, sometimes we find out we just don't get along, often for reasons above, and just get tired of going there. That usually isn't the case, and it can work the OTHER way, too. Once, when we were having some personality problems with a foreman, and I had a staff member volunteer his vacation time to go do a "complete" punch list for, ah, fun.
As to cost, I'm sure it varies across the board, especially with travel costs. I have made cross country trips to look at one thing, sometimes on last minute airfares of $1000 or more. Add in hotel, car, etc, plus a daily fee of about $200 an hour, or up to $2000 per day (I usually bill 10 hour days, including travel, etc. when on site, if its an extra visit not anticipated in my original agreement) and a one day visit can cost several thousand dollars in some cases. I will also say that I have made $5000 site visits that saved an owner, or contractor, 10X that, or more, by seeing problems no one else did.
Of course, they can always add more days, if the project necessitates it, and most owners do retain full confidence in the gca, and have few qualms about a few thousand dollars on a multi million dollar project. If the project is exciting, and the Owner is willing to pay travel costs, I'm usually willing to add some days to the total for the good of the project. At some point though, particularly difficult and time consuming projects do get to the point where we have to apply for an additional fee to keep going.
I generally leave 20-25% of my fee for site visits, and simply divide what's there by $2000 to determine the number of days I give on site. So, if I have provided a reduced fee to the Owner, for whatever reason, I need to limit field time provided as part of the lump sum, since its a time business. On a $200,000 contract, that would be 20-25 days, on $300,000, it would be 30-37 days, etc. It should really be less days, since there is always the followup field report to write. With laptops, at least we can use plane time to do that.
We try to time our visits for maximum effect of course, but weather etc. sometimes confounds us. Generally, I like to personally flag tree clearing lines, bunkers, grassing lines, etc. as well as approve all shaping along the way. )
As mentioned, every visit must have some time devoted to a cursory check of construction quality, as that is usually in our contract. So, we look in trenches, sample greens mix, count seed and fertilizer bags, etc. etc. There are always site meetings, where we review schedules, problems, etc. There are days when I have attended those meetings all day, and have an associate do the fun work, and we go check it in twighlight hours by ourselves.
Sometimes, Owners want to go with you, which is usally fine, but I hate to have them hear us discuss things among ourselves......
Sorry to be so long - If Doak had written this, perhaps it would have been titled, "Anatomy of a Site Visit."
