10 Benefits of Construction Administration for Architects
This year has been the most eventful and educational one for my life as an architect. The biggest contributing factor to my experiences this year has been taking the managing role on a large 12 million dollar renovation project that’s currently in construction. This project is about half of the way to completion and is being fast tracked. After one year of being on this construction project, I’ve become more confident as an architect in all areas of the profession. As I’m updating this in early 2020, I’m now in the construction adminsitration phase of a $200+ million project and there’s so much I want to share from my experiences. Here are 10 benefits of construction administration for architects.
1. Understanding the lines we draw
One of the most common ideas that young architects have about architecture is that everything drawn in a set of construction documents can and will be fabricated and built according to the lines on the page. Sometimes, we get so comfortable with our BIM capabilities that we believe this world of perfect 90 degree angles and 1/16 inch tolerances accurately depicts what can be done in reality.
The moment that our construction documents enter the administration phase of the project, everything changes and we face the reality of how building components really come together. We see how contractors use their technology to setup guides around a site, stake the ground to locate the perimeter of our building, spray paint the floor to mark underground lines, and so on. We get a better understanding about how the lines in our documents reflect real life materials that come together to form the different components of a building. We also have to face the reality of building tolerances and material alterations over time like contractions and expansions.
Most importantly, we learn that every line we put on a page is a material that interacts with others. These materials have thicknesses, properties that allow them to bend or remain stiff, have varying fire ratings, and so forth. What we once thought was a simple line on a page that came together to form a beautiful drawing now has more meaning than we could ever imagine. We could never fully consider every possibility of each individual line that we draw. We could only understand what we know to be true, make our design decisions, and learn from construction experiences down the road. That’s what makes us architects.
2. Working with multiple personalities
Depending on the construction project we’re working on, there will always be varying personalities that we have to be able to work around. Sometimes, we’ll be working with educated owners who lead the construction sector of their business and other times we’ll be working with owners who are having us design their very first dream home. Either way, these people have different backgrounds and experiences that will inform how they interpret issues and outcomes of the project. We learn to read these different personalities and develop our best approach to bringing them up to speed on the project.
Similarly, we’ll have to work with contractors who will either follow the construction documents down to the size of every nail to be used, ones who have done things one way and will try to construct the project based on their past experiences, and contractors who are in between. Understanding which contractor will be building your project is important because you’ll be able to guide them towards strictly following your documents or allowing substitutions.
3. Seeing the cost implications of our design decisions
Once a construction document set is approved and enters the bidding stages, we get to see what a contractor’s best estimate to construct the building would be. When a contractor is selected and the construction is underway, we’ll inevitably receive questions about our documents and details letting us know if the details can actually be constructed the way that it’s depicted. In most cases, projects under construction will have a change order where an unforeseen condition arises that affects our design and we’re forced to alter the design to solve the issue. Once our alterations are completed and approved by the owner, we get to see the costs of these changes from the contractor.
There are other times when our clients will ask us to modify a part of the original design during the construction phase of the project. Ultimately, this leads to additional time, which usually means more money. This is where it’s important to educate our clients on the changes that they’re proposing at this stage in the project. A situation like this often leads to either a simple modification that might not even have additional costs or it can be a change worth a good percentage of the project. These situations are difficult because time is of the essence. Every day that’s spent solving design problems related to the change is time that the contractor could be using to construct the building. Hopefully, the changes are in areas that the contractor could work around.
Everything costs something.
4. Learning from our omissions
Unless we’ve somehow cracked the code of putting together the perfect set of construction documents, specifications, and contracts, we’ll never have a 100% error and omission free project. Human errors are inevitable and when we’re working around the clock to put a construction document set together, there’s bound to be omissions in our documents. Omissions are different from errors because they’re things that we didn’t think of at the time of design whereas errors are things that we depicted incorrectly.
As a project under construction moves along, there’s bound to be requests for information (RFI) that reveal these omissions to the design team. During this time, the contractor explains the issue(s) through the RFI to give the design professional a better understanding of the problem. As the architect working on the project, we get to review these questions against the drawings and understand the contractor’s perspective. In some cases, we’ll see that we missed something in our details and in the future, we’ll hopefully avoid making the same omission again.
5. Experiencing our design
Through construction, we get to experience the design that we developed from a small idea and sketches to a fully enclosed and inhabitable building. Throughout the construction project, we get to see our designs slowly come to life with floor slabs, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, fire protection, wall framing, glazing, and so on. As all of these elements come together, we get to see spaces form and be enclosed. We get to see the custom and unique details that we worked through finally come together to form the spaces that we once imagined.
6. Learning to negotiate
Almost every interaction between the owner, contractor, and us will lead to situations where we need to use our negotiation skills to figure out the best solution that’s agreeable to all parties. When I use the term negotiate, I’m not referring to the myth that there’s always a winner and a loser at the end of the negotiation. Rather, everyone should walk away feeling as if they’ve attained a part of what they were searching for in the first place.
Each time a question arises about the design of the project, an architectural detail, a product with a potential substitution, and so on, there are opportunities to either make a modification and do something better for the same or less cost, or opportunities to save the project time in construction.
Learning to listen, read body language, obtain more information, and respond to each situation is critical for us during construction administration. There are times when we need to be mindful of something like a request to substitute a product from the contractor or a change request by the owner.
7. Expanding our network
As the projects that we work on get larger in scale, the number of key players in the project grows as well. This gives us opportunities to meet team members from the client, contractor, construction manager, and consultant teams that we might’ve only spoken with over the phone or via emails. There’s a deeper connection that arises when we meet our consultants in person for the first time because we could finally put a name to a face.
At the same time, if a project requires the teams to travel, we have opportunities to spend our meal times together including dinner and drinks at a local bar. During holiday seasons, a larger project will typically put together a feast in the largest room of the construction trailer. On smaller and local projects, there’s usually a last meeting of the year where everyone shakes each others hands and talks about their plans for the holidays.
Use these opportunities to network and meet more people who you might work with in the future.
8. Learning about products and materials
Every project generally uses the same types of materials that typically come from the same handful of large manufacturers like Armstrong ceilings and floors or USG gypsum wall boards. During the design phases of the project, we generally meet with local representatives from these companies who will give us any information that we need to incorporate their products into the design of the project.
However, the construction administration phase of the project requires us not only to review product data, shop drawings, O&M’s and so on, it also requires us to review the installation of the materials during the punchlisting stage of the project. This is the moment of every project where we get to see if the materials were installed as specified or if the contractor might’ve installed them in a different way.
To be able to determine if the materials are correctly installed, we need to know how the our contract documents and the manufacturer outlines the methods of installation.
9. Figuring out efficient methods of handling paperwork
Once the construction phase of a large ($5 million) project commences, there comes a moment when the contractor starts to send in their initial batch of submittals either as PDF’s in emails or through an online platform like Submittal Exchange. The first few months are full of reviewing literature related to all the materials required to start constructing the project. This can range from shop drawings for structural steel to product data and test results for concrete.
As the project continues, more submittals are provided for our review and eventually, requests for information start coming. It takes a few weeks to get into a comfortable pace with all the reviews and prioritizing each document that needs our attention. By the end of the project, we not only review every document that it took to construct the building, we’ve also walked through the building countless times.
10. Applying the knowledge we gain in future projects
The most important benefit of getting construction administration experience as an architect is that the knowledge we gain from resolving issues in a short amount of time, reviewing product data and shop drawings, and working with our teams can be applied to all future projects. I always think of the moment we close out of a project and begin the next one as a karate kid moment where all the issues we dealt with on the previous project is caught on the next.
Although every project is different, the elements and issues that arise are similar enough in nature that the skills we gain through construction experience can be applied universally to all of them. From the ways that we talk to our client and contractor to the process of issue resolution. Every construction project has lessons learned that we can apply to future ones.
Conclusion
By working on an architecture project under construction and fully investing ourselves in the project, we quickly understand the realities of time, money, and design. Learning about these three things through construction allows us to think more efficiently and intelligently when designing our next project(s).
