Getting to the Finish Line on Your Construction Project

Get These 5 Things Right and You’re on Your Way to Successfully Completing Your Project

Painful as it is to admit, construction projects have a way of going sideways. Far too often, they go over budget and over schedule. Schedule and budget are of course synonymous with time and money. As the saying goes, “time is money.” This being the case, you can begin see how important it is to keep your project on schedule. Doing so necessitates a rigorous process, one that few clients are familiar with and which many construction professionals (even architects) struggle to manage. Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll be well on your way to meeting or exceeding your expectations while avoiding the pitfalls of cost and schedule overruns.

Discovery

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know. So Find Out!

Before beginning the design process, your design team needs to understand as much as possible about the things that are as yet unknown. The discovery stage can include walking your proposed home site, researching local ordinances, and much more. Taking time upfront for this, your architect can help you identify potential issues before they become big problems.

On the mundane end of the spectrum, your architect will need to uncover any applicable CC&Rs (Covenants, Codes & Restrictions). These can include HOA (Homeowners’ Association) or neighborhood rules as well as planning and zoning requirements. There may also be environmental considerations which can impact your project, such as proximity to rivers, streams, flood zones, or the coast. Regional environmental hazards need to be understood as well, things like proximity to earthquake fault lines, hurricane potential, and maximum expected snow loading. Of course identifying what utilities are available at your site and where they connect is important too. If there is no municipal sewer, you’ll need a septic system. Identifying appropriate locations where a septic system can go on your property can impact where you might decide to place the home itself.

You’ll also wan to understand what it is you truly want out of your home. Oddly enough, some of these wants may be somewhat unconscious. A good architect should have a list of important questions to ask you in order to distill what it is you’re really wanting deep inside. This line of inquiry should take you far beyond the list of rooms that you require and instead will help get to the heart of the matter, the why questions which reveal your true goals for your project. Without answers to these questions, you’re likely to get a fine house in the end. Answer them however, and you’re likely to reveal a design that exceeds your dreams.

Building the Brief

With the unknown now uncovered, you’re ready to build a design brief. A design brief is a document which pulls together everything from the discovery stage and combines it with a “building program” and adjacency/relationship diagrams. The building program is simply the list of spaces that you require, along with their respective areas (square footages). This is then used to create one or more adjacency or relationship diagrams, which in turn illustrate how all of these spaces might relate to one another. Think of this as a mind map for your home design.

The design brief should also include things like your construction budget and expected completion date. You can think of this document almost like a business plan for your design and construction project. It identifies what you want and how you want it. The next step, Planning and Scheduling, helps to define how you will get there.

Planning + Scheduling

The next important step in planning your project is well… planning your project. Setting a realistic budget is important at this stage. Identifying how much you want to spend on construction will help to roughly define the the scope of the project, it’s size, and quality. This gives your architect and contractor a clear target to aim for. It’s very hard to hit the bullseye when there’s no target to aim at.

Also, you don’t want to forget about “soft costs.” Soft costs are the costs associated with designing and permitting your project. These include fees for your architect, structural engineer, and civil engineer, as well as any specialty consultants your project may require, such as a landscape architect or lighting designer. You’ll also want to budget for permitting fees with your municipality. These are the fees that your city or county charges to check your architect’s plans and issue a building permit.

At this stage you’ll also want to have your architect develop a preliminary project schedule. This will help to keep you and the entire design team on track to meeting your schedule and budget goals because again, time is money.

Decision Making

Make Decisions Early and Try Not to Change Your Mind. Doing So Will Cost You Exponentially More the Longer You Put Them Off.

While not necessarily more important than these other steps, this is where things often go wrong. Projects begin as ideas on paper and gradually develop into fully-engineered and coordinated technical documents. These documents are then used to purchase materials and built your home. This development process takes time and costs money.

When a client changes their mind early on in the process, when things are still at a conceptual level, there’s little harm done. A quick sketch can be crumpled up and revised quickly. However, when changes are made later in the process, after multiple consultants have coordinated their work, changing things becomes more costly. If changes are made even later in the process, say during construction, the cost of these changes increases exponentially.

None of this is particularly obvious to the uninitiated but this is the way things are. Getting this part right requires a combination for foresight and discipline. You should be able to rely on your architect to help you navigate this territory, steering you clear of costly mistakes or changes and reminding you of the cost implications of not making (and sticking to) decisions in a timely manner.

Execution + Follow Through

Hell Is Full of Good Intentions but Heaven Is Full of Good Works.

All of these ideas are well and good but amount to very little without real follow through. In this process, your architect is your coach and guide. They should help you to make good decisions as and when these decisions are required for the overall health and success of your project. If you’ve developed the right kind of relationship with your architect, they will haver permission to tell you when you’re making mistakes or getting yourself into hot water. It’s your job to either listen or accept the consequences, those consequences typically being added time and cost.

And at the end of the day, it’s your project. You’re allowed to change your mind as late in the process as you like, so long as you’re ok with the ramifications. Having a clear and honest conversation with your architect around these topics, early in the process, can make all the difference. This way you can set up “rules of the road” so that everyone knows what is expected of them and understands what protocols might be enacted should someone step off the path.

Getting to the finish line begins with a plan, a team, and …

Now for the racing analogy. An elite, competitive runner has their own team of professionals working together behind the scenes and on the track to help them reach the finish line. That team wasn’t assembled just before the start of the race; they’ve worked together for months, even years, planning and preparing with each other and the runner. They share insights, review progress, and coordinate every effort.

Bring together your own collaborative team of experts early on as you consider and plan for your new home. Designing and building a custom home is no sprint, it’s a marathon. And your team — your architect, engineer, contractor, and other professionals — is there to get you to the finish line.

If you’re looking to get on track to design and build your own California dream home. Let’s talk!