Yes, I was surprised that the learning wasn't along the lines of "measure twice, cut once".
But also, he trusted his dependent team / vendor too much (the new home builder) and assumed that part was done correctly when he started. I feel like in the software world, if you're integrating an SDK into a new project for example, you'd look around a bit to confirm you can integrate it like you have in the past on older projects.
There's nothing wrong with poking around the codebase a bit, or doing a proof of concept, to get a better handle on the estimate.
But also, he trusted his dependent team / vendor too much (the new home builder) and assumed that part was done correctly when he started. I feel like in the software world, if you're integrating an SDK into a new project for example, you'd look around a bit to confirm you can integrate it like you have in the past on older projects.
There's nothing wrong with poking around the codebase a bit, or doing a proof of concept, to get a better handle on the estimate.