Mitigation of Risks - Understanding Sequencing and Constructibility

So last couple of things to say about mitigation of risk. One of them is having a reasonably good, clear understanding of construction sequencing. So, while this is actually the contractor's job is to understand how things are gonna to be sequenced and it's really their job to actually do the sequencing, it's useful if the architectural drawings are helpful in that process and sort of supply a sort of basic sort of expectation for the flow of information.

So for example if you're gonna be proposing something that is very large precast concrete panels, while it's not your job to be 100% clear about how it's gonna work, it would probably make sense for you to have a pretty good idea where the crane would be in order to get those panels in place. And the reason for that is, well if you don't have a reasonably good idea where that crane would be, it may turn out that the crane doesn't work, that you would have to get out a much, much larger crane and be very, very expensive and make it prohibitive.

And therefore that whole design time that you spent working on precast panels goes out the door as you go back into side cast or some other structural system. So, understanding the sort of sequencing and constructability of materials is an important idea. And the important aspect of that is about helping make clearer and more, sort of, reasonable and more what's expected sets of drawings and other communication systems.

So, pre-cast panels is an interesting example, another example would be understanding the scale of the equipment that you're talking about. So for HVAC equipment, often air handling units might be the size of a, you know, small van or something like that, well that's a big piece of equipment and it's gonna have to get in somehow, into it's position. So you may well wanna be thinking, well how would I get that thing in down the road where after the building's skin is put together.

And sort of understanding how something like that would be moved through and into a building. Or do they need to build the building in such a way that they put that in first and then build around it, right. These kinds of issues, again, they're not you're liability issues, but if you're looking for project management, the overall smooth flowing of that project, having a clear idea of the sequencing and the constructability is a very useful thing. Now it maybe that that's something that doesn't happen until you're actually speaking with the contractors and you're helping and changing the documentation in order to make their life better.

And the reason that you're making their life better is because you're trying to make the overall project smoother. We've already talked about the idea of different views, and having multiple sets of eyes. I think that sense is a really important one that's likely to show up on the exam in some form. That it's not just a sort of lone architect, Howard Roark, out there in the world doing his own thing, but that you have a logical process and that that process allows for other points of view and other diversity of thinking so that you can have, hopefully, the best and most innovative design answers and systems to answer all the code issues, all the contract issues, all of that stuff, in order to make that make the most sense, so.

Multiple points of review, multiple eyes for reviews, multiple issues at review so that you're always catching all of those things as you move a project along.

And part of that is gonna be through training programs about the code and about the contracts. One of the things that we found over and over again is that, actually quite a lot of people who were going out onto job sites and spending time, you know, telling people what to do on job sites, really don't understand their contracts and that's a significant issue. You know, if you're representing a firm, you should know what it is that your contractual role is.

And so, training programs would be important that in order for a practice to make sure that a project was working correctly, they should have had training programs on what is in the contracts and how the contracts work. There should be training programs about understanding how codes work so that everybody in house has a clear understanding. It's one thing to know that the project architect and maybe the project manager and maybe some of the architects below them are versed in code compliance, but if you want to be able to have everybody working at sort of maximum capacity, it's best if everybody has a pretty good idea of code compliance, so that they're bringing issues up before they become a problem.

And they're sort of using that process as a way for everybody to constantly being trained and getting better at those issues. One of the main ones that I think you should take away from this is this idea of lessons learned.

This is sort of an old school idea that as soon as you do a project, you know, no project goes perfectly, you know, there's always frustrations and problems and even significant problems. That's the nature of construction is that there's pretty much always a problem, sometimes many problems, even on really successful projects. So, understanding where those problems come from and trying to mitigate those from happening at a later time.

Well one of the best ways that you can do that is by some sort of slightly formalized or very formalized idea of a lessons learned. And so it might be just the team gets together after a project and you just chat informally, take some notes, make sure everybody hears about those, those notes go around to everybody else. Or it might be a very formalized process where each individual goes through a survey, writes out what worked, what didn't work, how did the communication work, you know, was the design the right design given the program and the code reviews that we did, or were we struggling to fit a different design in than what would have really been the correct one.

So, you know, going back through and re-visiting those issues so that you can see for next time what is the best way that we should move forward. You know, and it might be about, wow, every time we had a problem it was really about the fact that our consultants didn't know some important piece of information.

And so, you know, the wrong design decisions were being made and we had to spend a lot of time backtracking through that. Well that means, there's something wrong with our system of communication, or we have the wrong team. But there's probably an issue with the communication and so we have to find a better formalized way to make that communication work in the next round. So, as we start thinking about these things, it's always gonna be, you know, how do you train forward, how do you learn from the mistakes that have been made, and how do you make a drawing set that is clear and understandable and the information is where everybody expects it in order for that to be a nice smooth project as it goes from the beginning, all the way through the construction.

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