Peter Muench is senior vice president of preconstruction services at Rochester, New York-based LeChase Construction Services. Opinions are the author’s own.
It’s no secret that preconstruction planning is crucial for delivering a successful project. These days, however, firms are under pressure to complete this phase even faster — sometimes in as little as two weeks.
Peter Muench
Courtesy of LeChase Construction Services
At the same time, project variables have become more complex, with uncertainty around availability of materials and labor making it substantially more challenging to plan and estimate costs.
This is where using technology can really help streamline the preconstruction process to deliver even more value. New tools enable savvy preconstruction teams to plan more comprehensively, with greater synchronicity and complete transparency while driving the rarest of results on a construction project: no surprises.
At LeChase, we recently experienced this firsthand on a $13.5 million expansion at the Charlton School, a private secondary school in Burnt Hills, New York. The scope involved construction of four buildings totaling 21,000 square feet.
The project marked the first time that LeChase worked with the school as well as the project’s designers, Saratoga Springs, New York-based Balzer & Tuck Architecture. The client was utilizing both New York state and private funding, which dictated a very quick preconstruction phase with accurate budgets. There was only one chance to get the available funding, and any overruns would be out of pocket. That meant the team needed to understand the budget in real time.
In a traditional construction manager at risk project, price estimates come at three milestones: schematics, design and construction documents.
But those steps force the owner and design team into a hurry-up-and-wait posture until each phase is reached to know where a project stands financially. That often translates into revisiting the budget and reworking elements at each of those steps — eroding forward progress and momentum.
But at the Charlton School, after creating the initial control budget, the team used Oakland, California-based Join’s collaborative project delivery platform, which includes a focus on the preconstruction phase, to move forward with a lean process to effectively address tweaks in the design.
With all stakeholders engaged on this single platform, the design team could introduce an idea at any point. When they did, the tool alerted the estimating staff to price it out. Then, at the next owner-architect-contractor meeting, the team could review each design idea and the cost implication to immediately decide on a path forward.
Maintaining momentum
Through this process, the project team maintained constant forward momentum — often a rare outcome on a construction project — without the need to backtrack for any redesign.
Additionally, the owner always understood the status of the project cost against budget. This collaboration of all members allowed Charlton School’s executive director to update the institution’s board at each meeting, eliminating the mystery of where the project would land. In fact, the school even used the platform to keep students and their families apprised of the current plans and renderings.
Today, as a result of this well executed preconstruction collaboration and leveraging of technology, the project is well underway, with completion slated for spring of 2025.
Meshing a collaborative approach with technology drives a “one team” mentality that is vital in preconstruction. When properly implemented, technology can be instrumental in ensuring that preconstruction is a smooth process. It can be a key asset in creating a plan that saves time, optimizes value and efficiency, avoids delays, enhances satisfaction and — most importantly — results in a highly successful project.
