Design-Building the Dream Team

At the new George Mason High School (GMHS) we used this approach by engaging mechanical, electrical, low voltage and millwork/casework trade partners early and often. Identifying these trades during the RFP process and throughout design was critical to achieving the Falls Church City Public Schools’ (FCCPS) program requirements, while meeting the budget.

So how can you build your own dream team?

Selecting Trade Partners

In my experience, there are two approaches to early trade partner engagement:

• Hand picking trade partners –This approach allows the trade partners to support the selection process with the owner and help develop the team’s design solution.
• Early trade partner selection – These trade partners are brought onboard through a formal RFP process as soon as the design-build team has been selected.

In both cases it is important to identify trade partners that will complement your design-build team. Some tangible factors to consider include their market experience, experience with the design-build team and success delivering value on past projects. While these are important, the intangibles are just as vital. How well do they communicate? Will their personalities compliment the team? Creating a collaborative team dynamic from the start is critical to the project’s success.

Communication with Your Design-Build Team

Don’t let contractual lines create roadblocks to effective communication. Enable your entire design-build team to collaborate with one another. What made our design-build team so effective was the ability for the engineer to communicate directly with Gilbane or the trade partners and vice versa. However, opening the lines of communication means the team must be diligent about documentation and transparency to ensure everyone has the information they need to make informed decisions.

Setting Up Your Design-Build Team’s Meeting Structure

Establishing an effective meeting structure will support communication. For example, at GMHS we used the following meetings to make timely decisions:

• All-hands design-build team meeting – This occurred every Monday for two to four hours. The design-builder, architect, engineers and trade partners all participated. The goals of these meetings were coordination, schedule review and issue resolution.
• Cluster meetings – The design-builder, engineer and trade partners met for three hours every week for design review, coordination and system evaluation.
• Owner meetings – These were our marathon meetings. They could be anywhere from two to five hours. While they may have been long, they were effective because the design-build team, engineer, owner representative and owner all had their key decision makers in the room. This allowed for real-time decisions.
• Discipline-specific meetings – These were deep dives with the owner and each trade partner to really understand the building and what functionality they were offering.

Benefits to Early Trade Partner Engagement

Ultimately, involving trade partners early allowed us to give the client a more customized solution for their needs. Below are a few examples:

• Outlets: The education specification provided guidelines on where we needed to provide outlets. However, these guidelines didn’t align with the requirements of a Net Zero building or the updated design. By engaging Freestate Electric to provided unit prices for comparison during design, the owner ultimately received more of what they needed, in the right locations.
• Controls: Originally, the owner requested the same controls system to tie into their other buildings. However, Pro Air worked with FCCPS to understand the project goals and the limitations of their current system. This led to the decision for a more robust system that could track the complex controls of a Net Zero building.

Design-build as a delivery model already promotes an environment of collaboration between the owner, designer and builder. By engaging trade partners as part of the team, you elevate the level of collaboration. This enables you to achieve the goals and aspirations of the project – truly creating a dream project for the owner.

Interested in learning more? If you attended the 2020 Design-Build Conference & Expo you can watch Jennifer Mack’s session, “Design-Building the Dream Team” on-demand until October 2021.