Overseeing the Design Process

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Your architect will manage and run the design process, but the development manager should oversee this process for quality assurance.  No matter how experienced and competent your architect is, he and the rest of the design team are fallible.  Almost every set of plans will have some level of errors and omissions in them.  Even if your designer is experienced and confident, don't be afraid to question him if something in his design does not make sense to you. 

 

For example, you may tell your architect to ensure there is good coordination between the structural engineer and the MEP engineer to ensure all the MEP lines above the ceiling have enough room because you don't want to have to lower the ceiling heights once you get into construction.  Your architect and his hubris may be somewhat dismissive of your concerns, telling you, "Of course we do all that coordination, that is standard to the design process."  I have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in change orders over the years, and had to live with lower ceilings because this "standard" coordination was in fact not done thoroughly enough. 
 

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Stay on Schedule

In my experience, architects are usually good at keeping up with with the design schedule they submit to you.  I suspect this is largely because they give you a generous schedule that they will comfortably be able keep up with.  After you get the initial design schedule from the architect, look at all the task durations and the milestones and challenge the architect to see if he can design faster.  He will likely say no, but you simply mentioning the importance of getting through the design process quickly will put a little pressure on him.  Also, monitor achieving the design schedule milestones along the way, e.g., completion of SDs, DDs, check pricing, and CDs.  

 

Design-Assist

If you are designing a big and/or complex project, I would recommend bring in your GC early to the design process to provide design-assist services.  You want your GC in on the design process to advise the design team on constructability, material and equipment lead times, and cost. These design-assist services should help to keep your project on budget.  If the GC sees that the design team is adding something to the plans that is really expensive, that was not included in the GC’s conceptual pricing from the SDs, the GC can inform the designer and owner that construction costs will go up. 

 

An effective and productive design-assist process doesn’t just happen on its own. You, as the development manger, have to enforce it happens.  You can tell your GC and architect that you want them working collaboratively on the design to ensure the construction costs stay on budget and your desired quality is achieved.  But if you don’t schedule periodic design-assist meetings, the architect will just design in a silo.  He doesn’t want to slow up his design effort, and create more work for himself, by seeking feedback from the GC.  Also, the GC doesn’t want to put forth the extra effort (iterative pricing, meeting attendance, potential arguments with the architect ) for design-assist.   Clearly and explicitly tell your architect and GC early that you will require an effective design-assist process to keep costs in budget and quality high. Put these design-assist requirements in their contracts. 
 

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Next Page: Request For Proposal - Construction

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