Several years ago we were in the process of planning a warehouse expansion for a long time client. Over the course of several months we had interacted with the building owner and tenant to determine the building size, height, column spacing and racking layout. Then just as we were wrapping up the planning phase and getting started on the construction document phase, the tenant’s safety group got involved. They requested a pedestrian walkway alongside the fork truck aisles, which caused some major changes. Unlike Adam Sandler in the movie “The Wedding Singer”, no one was mad about the last minute addition to the design criteria, but it did put a kink in the planning process. In reality, this happens somewhat regularly in the design world. It’s rare that our first set of planning documents translates to match the final construction documents.
There are many thing we have found to be true about planning, designing and constructing new facilities and additions to existing facilities, two of them are…
“Sequence Matters”. When projects are planned, then designed/engineered, then constructed you end up with a successful project. When those three functions are done out of sequence, the project struggles, the stakeholders get frustrated and budgets are affected.
“Scope x Quality = Budget”. This formula never fails. On any project you can control a max of two of the factors in the equation (not all three) and someone else will control the third. The game is to be sure you are always controlling two of the factors. We talk about this formula often because it is such an important thing to keep in perspective.
The “Things I Should Have Known Yesterday” items can affect both schedule and cost. Give us a call and we will help you identify scope items early and establish workable solutions.