Peter Muench is senior vice president of preconstruction services at LeChase Construction Services in Rochester, New York. The opinions are the author’s own.
It’s no secret that pre-construction planning is crucial to delivering a successful project. These days, however, companies 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 about the availability of materials and labor making it substantially more difficult to plan and estimate costs.
This is where the use of technology can really help streamline the pre-construction process to deliver even more value. New tools enable intelligent preconstruction teams to plan more comprehensively, with greater synchronicity and full transparency while driving the rarest of outcomes in a construction project: no surprises.
At LeChase, we recently experienced this firsthand in a $13.5 million expansion at Charlton School, a private high school in Burnt Hills, New York. The scope included the construction of four buildings totaling 21,000 square feet.
The project marked LeChase’s first time working with the school and the project’s designers, Balzer & Tuck Architecture, Saratoga Springs, New York. The client used New York state and private funding, which dictated a very fast pre-construction phase with accurate budgets. There was only one chance to get the funding available, and any overage would be out of pocket. This meant the team had to understand the budget in real time.
In a traditional construction manager project at risk, price estimates have three milestones: schematics, design, and construction documents.
But these steps force the owner and design team into a wait-and-see attitude until each phase is reached to know where a project stands financially. This often results in revisiting the budget and reworking items at each of these steps, eroding progress and momentum.
But at 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 design tweaks. .
With all stakeholders involved in this unique platform, the design team could pitch an idea at any time. When they did, the tool alerted the estimator that the price. Then, at the next owner-architect-contractor meeting, the team could review each design idea and cost implication to immediately decide the way forward.
Keeping the momentum going
Through this process, the project team maintained a steady momentum, often a rare result in a construction project, without the need to backtrack on any redesigns.
Also, the owner always understood the cost status of the project with the budget. This collaboration of all members allowed the Charlton School’s chief executive to update the institution’s board at each meeting, removing the mystery of where the project would land. In fact, the school even used the platform to keep students and their families informed of current plans and performances.
Today, as a result of this well-executed pre-construction collaboration and leveraging of technology, the project is underway, with completion expected in the spring of 2025.
Combining a collaborative approach with technology drives a “one team” mentality that is vital in preconstruction. When implemented correctly, 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, increases satisfaction, and most importantly, results in a highly successful project.
