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Design-Build Advantages Reaped Even Before Construction Begins The Project: Doctor’s Waiting Room & Optical Sales Renovations
Tri-County Eye Physicians & Surgeons, PC, came to E&E Building Group to renovate the office for their ophthalmology practice. The scope and intent of this 1,600 square foot project was for a complete makeover of the patient reception and waiting room as well as the retail space for Physicians’ Optical, including newly designed specialty displays for eyewear. The Challenges: Budget, Time, Collaboration · Design-Bid-Build method estimate was 50% over what the client had budgeted. · Minimize surprises and cost overruns. · Dealing with several entities, risk and additional time to the owner/client is always a concern. · Avoid the role of referee between designers and builders. The Proposed Solution: Design-Build Our experience with the Design-Build process enabled E&E to offer an alternative to the previous over-budget Design-Bid-Build estimate submitted. Basically, for a Design-Bid-Build (the old way) project delivery method, the client would hire first a designer for the project, and then enter into an arrangement with a builder. For Design-Build, the design and construction aspects of the job are headed under one firm, allowing for greater efficiency in concurrent processes. The client also benefits from having a single point of responsibility for coordination, quality, cost control and schedule adherence and the natural cooperation between the builder and architect, since they are on the same team from the start.
Cost savings alone, however, was not the only goal, but rather was part of the design-build builder’s broader objective of creating value for the project. A comprehensive knowledge of labor and material costs coupled with an awareness of the cost relationships between the various project components, and the ability to control design, allowed the design-build team to increase a project’s value while reducing overall design, planning and construction costs. Benefits Reaped Pre-Construction
· A 70% savings in design costs and an estimated 30% savings in construction costs – saving one-third of the original Design-Bid-Build cost estimate.
· The renovation is scheduled to take 12 weeks instead of the originally estimated five months.
· The client’s time spent involved in the project was a fraction of previous Design-Bid-Build projects due to the single point-of-responsibility.
· The comprehensive knowledge of labor and material costs coupled with an awareness of the cost relationships between the various project components, and the ability to control design, allow the design-build team to increase a project’s value while reducing its overall cost.
There is a natural savings in time and money due to design-build's streamlined process. It is less bureaucratic, requires less paperwork due to the single point of contact and increases the accuracy of the communication flow.
In the words of Dr. Prince, partner of Tri-County Eye Physicians & Surgeons, PC, “In order to balance the efficient use of my time, maintain quality construction while adhering to the new architectural design proposed, the Design-Build paradigm developed by Tim Ernst implemented by E&E Building Group allowed for our project to take place within the budgetary and time constraints that exist. With our history of prior quality craftsmanship and construction done by E&E Building Group in 2004/5 for construction of our attached 12,000 sq ft ambulatory surgery center, we are confident in the quality and timeliness of the project to be delivered in just the proposed 12 weeks of construction!”
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