The planning and execution of major construction projects can be challenging and stressful endeavors for organizations. Whether it’s the expansion of an existing hospital, the renovation of a student center on a university campus or a brand new corporate headquarters, the potential for legal risk, financial loss and poor outcomes can keep company leadership up at night.
It’s important for executives to not simply view construction efforts as necessary evils and instead take an active role in pushing their teams to find better solutions. There are new delivery models and strategies that can significantly reduce risk, enhance certainty of outcome and help companies achieve their financial and operational goals. Once such method is design-led construction, a single-source delivery approach where the architecture, engineering and construction entities are one and the same and work collaboratively throughout the life of a project.
This unified approach can directly help C-suite leaders achieve their organizational goals. Here are four examples.
DESIGN-LED CONSTRUCTION STRENGTHENS BALANCE SHEETS
As every diligent Chief Financial Officer knows, major construction efforts have a tendency to exceed budget and impact bottom line more than expected. One key benefit of design-led construction is the ability for the design-led construction team to guarantee price for the client. With both the design and construction teams as one entity, communication, coordination and collaboration are improved as project teams work to solve problems without sacrificing adherence to budget.
Design-led construction also allows the team to treat the project budget as a living document that tracks current pricing against the target project cost throughout the duration of both design and construction phases. This provides an evolving snapshot of current costs and opportunities to constantly look for savings, ensuring the owner is receiving the best value for every dollar spent. This dynamic approach helps CFOs and their teams realize the most cost-effective solution as possible and maximize their firm’s financial investment.
DESIGN-LED CONSTRUCTION SAVES TIME AND REDUCES INEFFICIENCIES
The longer construction projects take, the more likely they are to negatively impact company operations. Chief Operating Officers often fear that construction efforts will weaken employee efficiency due to distractions or temporary work environments that aren’t conducive to their work needs. This becomes even further complicated with education efforts about the new space, relocation, change management, etc.
An inherent benefit of design-led construction is its ability to streamline the process of concurrent activities with the increased comfort level that exists between the designers on the A/E side and the construction managers on the construction side. This state-of-the-art project delivery method of integrating people, systems and practices, into a collaborative process that harnesses the talents and insights of all participants, undoubtedly optimizes results by reducing waste and maximizing efficiency. This single source alliance, structured to carefully monitor these concurrent activities throughout the various phases of design and construction, results in streamlined workflows that reduce time consuming redundancies normally associated with this type of overlapping scheduling methods.
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