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Frequently Asked Questions
Quite a few, depending on how many you decide to keep in paper form. 24” x 36” documents can be challenging to keep organized, and knowing which documents you need to keep and which to recycle is key. 8.5” x 11” documents are much easier, and a file cabinet or temporary file box with hanging files and manila folders will do the job just fine. The challenge with these docs is version control, especially with hand annotations using red pens and highlighters. Annotated docs will need to be scanned and sent out, then filed, either digitally or left on just paper.
Of course. They have seen this a thousand times, and have procedures in place to facilitate significant changes in your proposed project. Your architect should know all about this.
The answer to that question depends on:
- your project budget,
- your level of risk tolerance,
- how long you think you will be occupying or using the structure.
If you intend to "age in place," the last thing you want to be paying for in your 80s is ripping up that tile deck you installed at the peak of your earning years, because the whole thing has to be redone. Cost savings now may turn out to be "penny wise and pound foolish" later. You may be glad for a short time that you saved money on the initial installation, only to deeply regret that choice not-enough years later when you're faced with the option of ripping it all out and redoing it, or just "chasing leaks" for the rest of your stewardship of that property — and then dealing with the buyer’s inspection report or worse, their attorney after the next hard rain.
See the other FAQs in this section for more info.
It’s just this: You know your project will never cost less than that.
Even better, the savings you realize are many times the cost to realize them. So Why wouldn’t you do that?
However, this can be enhanced by structuring the chart of accounts to maximize analytic output, producing as many current company or project Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as possible, knowing that trending KPIs may need to be tracked elsewhere.
My experience is that bookkeepers and accountants are rarely focussed on KPI analytics, being of course far more concerned with the immediacy of payroll, and the ultimate goal of filing returns. It takes an excel expert to also crank out useful analytics, and bookkeepers don’t always fit that description.
But it’s something that you can certainly outsource easily enough. Let’s talk.
Having a complete record of everything you lost in the disaster. In the 1900s, these records were almost always lost in the disaster itself. Now all of our data lives (or should live) in the cloud, accessible anytime from anywhere. One of the most important things is to make sure you have the data to begin with. Lists, images of receipts, and photographs are all invaluable to track the loss of objects, but it's hard to recreate entire structures without a 3-D scan of the structure itself and all the other assets of, in or on the property.
See the other FAQ’s in this section for more information.
With modern equipment and a much smaller structure, a 3-D scan of your property or space can be completed in anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
Even better, you’ll also have all the necessary data to create a complete and accurate floor plan for any projects you may want to do in the future!
There are quite a few reasons why some projects may not be a good match for your firm- too big, too small, unrealistic owner expectations, not your specialty, etc. Asking the right questions in the right order and right away is a good start.
Recording those answers in a standardized format for a review before spending several hours in a conversation that serves no-one is a good next step. We can help you design a series of questions and a process to go with them that works best for your firm and for your market segment.
This will also free up the principal's or other decision-maker’s time that is far better spent on creating income for the firm.
For more info, see below for automation implementation.
And for almost all projects, it's easy to trace the problem back to poor, mismanaged, or simply non-existent information flows — systems not followed, or worse, no system at all. When you are investing your own money, it's always a good idea to make sure that everyone has the information they need at the right time and in the right form to get their job done quickly and correctly. Advocating for yourself is the key here, and skimping on systems because reasons almost always leads to poor results, and often higher costs.
Unlike public works projects, which have offices full of people whose only job is to manage information flows among project team members, in residential and light commercial projects, this process can be ad hoc or practically nonexistent. And in hindsight we say "if only we (or they) had known...."
I always like the analogy of “The Two Vacations.” Imagine they are in the exact same place, the exact same length, the weather’s exactly the same, and you do the exact same activities. The only difference between them is the planning.
In the first vacation, you planned everything well in advance. Every hotel, flight, and car rental, all activities vetted and chosen, and you packed all the right gear.
In the second vacation, you just showed up at the airport one day on the spur of the moment, with no planning at all, and hoped all the same plans and all the same activities would somehow turn out OK.
Which vacation ended up costing more? Which one delivered everything you wanted? Construction is no different: no planning, no systems, no clear road ahead almost always leads to getting less and spending more.
Over decades, we have found that 25-30% of proposed projects are revealed in the end to be non-viable; usually because of costs, but not always. If there is even a small chance that the project you intend may not be viable after all, you’ll want to find out ASAP, before you’ve spent money on designing something you won’t be building.
Here’s another true statement: Nobody ever picks up a document of project costs for the first time and exclaims with a broad smile “That’s all?? When do we start?”. No, sometimes it’s “Not a chance,” but more often it’s some form of “Well, now what? How do we get these costs down to a level that fits our financial goals for the project?” (And when is that not a good question in any case?)
Remember, this is an iterative process, not a single product, and is designed to hone in on an eventual contract amount for the builder. For more info, see below for The Three Stages of Value Engineering.
"A Picture is worth 1,000 words" is just as true in the 21st century as it was in the 1900s. Modern data visualizations can provide content and context — both the hard data and a framework for understanding it.
These visualizations can be not only informative, but also emotionally compelling, depending on how the data is structured in the presentation. No longer limited to simple charts and graphs, modern presentation design techniques, principles, and software can provide the message you wish to convey without relying on a lay person's ability to read pages of arcane text or understand poorly conceived and implemented graphs.
Everyone will have a different answer for this question, but whether or not you intend to recover or continue your professional relationships, it’s usually best to make every effort to address the issues that caused the crash before taking this step.
Also, if you are contemplating firing a provider, be sure to read your contract carefully for your responsibilities for termination spelled out for both parties and follow. them. to. the. letter., whenever possible.
HOWEVER… If you have retained an attorney to advise you, of course their counsel overrides the general advice meant for no one in particular here.
Oversight, oversight, oversight! It's important to put inspection protocols in place that are agreed to by all parties and accurately priced by the builder before construction begins, so that everyone understands their roles in the process and expectations can be completely met. These inspection protocols are usually carried out by your architect during construction. In some cases, this may also involve inspections by manufacturers’ representatives to ensure that their warranties can be met.
Most architects will include construction management in their contracts, either as a standard part of their contract, or as an additional service. This is always money well spent for both the best long-term results and the owner’s budget.
See the other FAQs in this section for more info.
Oh yes — there are multiple products on the market from many different manufacturers who offer complete and integrated systems whose components are chemically engineered to all work together for the best possible result.
See the other FAQs in this section for more info.
Not at all, and the time that you need to know whether or not you intend to rebuild is immediately following the disaster, not a year later after spending quite a bit of time and money on plans, engineering, and permits.
It's bad enough losing your home, what's worse is not knowing if you can rebuild or not until you spend a lot of money to find out. Taking the insurance money you get, selling the property, and moving to Hawaii is absolutely a viable option, and again, the time that you want to know is the next morning after the disaster, not a year and a LOT of cash spent later.
All this will allow your clients to get on with their lives, allowing you to move on with their case.
ASAP, of course! Generally speaking, it's after conceptual design, and before any structural engineering or planning department submission. And definitely before you start picking out finishes for flooring, lighting, etc.
This varies greatly from carrier to carrier, project to project, city to city, and state to state. Cognitive biases can lull us into a false sense of security. Until they don’t. That’s what insurance is for, and your own tolerance of risk should be reflected in the policies you demand from others or put in place yourself. Sleeping easy at night comes from knowing that your coverage fits your risk tolerance, is adequate for your project, and meets all legal requirements, as well as your own carrier.
1. Scenarios: The builder provides separate sub-totals for different main elements of the project, such as the landscaping, the structural upgrades, the kitchen, the door replacements—whatever fits your project. These elements are combined in different ways to create different Scenarios of what your total project may look like, allowing you to prioritize which ones are most important to you. (Backyard band gazebos often don’t make the cut.)
2. Options and Alternates, where you start getting into the details with different choices within your final choice Scenario. Options are things you may or may not do, like a giant skylight or no giant skylight. Alternates are things you will do, but might be a good place to Value Engineer the project down a bit. So that’s a “Yes” on the skylight, but maybe not so big (and maybe not with a built-in DJ sound and lighting system after all?).
3. Competitive Bidding of the project at the subcontractor level before and during construction. The savings can be split with the builder or passed on to the owner, either one by one, or tracked as a whole and paid out if certain goals are met as an incentive to the builder. Not every Builder is either willing to do so as part of their business model, or able to do so without the systems in place to track that activity. But every year the software improves, and it becomes easier to offer this kind of transparency and advocacy as an obviously better service to win more contracts.
They use software they wrote for their own purposes. As you can imagine, that software is designed to be used by adjusters, not builders, and to produce a single number in the least amount of time (what adjusters do for a living).
It is not at all configured to make sure to include everything (what builders do for a living), and the information layout design from insurance adjusters gives us the distinct impression that it is meant to obscure rather than reveal. This presents a challenge when you are trying to maximize your award.
The key is to counteroffer with your own information, created by builders whose software is designed to show and include every possible expense, and especially designed to categorize those expenses in the coverages exactly as provided for in the policy.
This is obviously a complex issue, and we can assist you through the process.
Right?!? Even after cleaning it all up, I still have in excess of 150 accounts. Apparently they are needed to live these days, and it’s likely to get worse. A tracking system and enforceable company policies that support it is the only way.
Unless you have construction industry experience, as an owner you probably don't have enough expertise in modern building standards and techniques to know if products are being installed or constructed according to:
- the manufacturer’s specifications
- the architect's direction
- industry best practices
This uncertainty can leave the owner in an uncomfortable place, not being sure if things are being done correctly or not. Most architects will include construction management in their contracts, either as a standard part of their contract, or as an additional service. This is always money well spent for both the best long-term results and the owner’s budget.
Another alternative is for the owner’s rep to prescribe, in writing, a clear path of quality control inspections done by some combination of the owner, architect, and builder at specific points in the process that everyone agrees to ahead of time. This is NOT an “I don’t trust my builder” conversation. It’s simply the owner advocating for themselves as a good consumer in a process that protects everyone (including the builder!) from the unintended consequences of potential misunderstandings.
Every company is different, and requires different types of analytics in order to improve operational efficiency, reduce overhead, or get a clear view of the profitability of any given project. We can certainly help you to make the most of your software, starting with creating a prioritized list of all the KPIs you need to sharpen your business, then deciding how they will be produced and who will produce them. Finally, we’ll reconfigure your chart of accounts to automate as much as possible.
Paying for work that isn’t complete is the worst thing you can do. Of all the project recoveries we’ve seen, this is a leading cause of a project crash.
There are several "best consumer practices" to make sure that contractual obligations are met by both parties, ensuring safe and swift payments to keep the project moving along quickly, starting with each party fully understanding and following the contractual obligations they agreed to upon signing.
Beyond understanding and adhering to the contract, invoices should be configured to be easily readable, compliant with legal requirements for your state, and contain enough detail to answer most questions that might arise from the owner. The invoice should answer far more questions than it raises.
There are often "special circumstances" that may affect or place conditions on a payment in order to achieve fairness for both parties and keep the job moving. These nuances are best handled by a professional who understands the implications of any proposed payment, not just the amount. Amounts are easy. Implications, not so much.
With an owner’s rep, you can be confident that knowledgeable professionals are working on your behalf to make sure problems don’t happen.
There is a straight and economical line between "now" and the day construction begins. It answers the question: "How do I get there spending the least amount of money?” By definition, any deviation from that line almost always costs more. The secret is never to find yourself saying "I wish we had known that before."
It's rare that a property owner or a lessor of a commercial space will be able to accurately sequence the steps of that straight line. Best Consumer Practices dictate that the Owner bring this question up again and again with their design team, advocating for themselves and their budget.
Beyond that, the next Best Practices for an Owner are:
1. Swift and final decisions.
2. Print and read everything sent to you, marking it up for questions and clarifications.
3. If you have both the time and inclination, offer to participate, and be prepared for swift follow-throughs.
4. Educate yourself. You’re about to spend a lot of money on construction, and it’s up to you to make sure it gets spent wisely. Know that “knowing just enough to make you dangerous” can be attenuated with open and engaged curiosity.
5. Ask questions. Most professionals are happy to instruct and inform, but lay people, no matter what industry, pretending they know more than they do will seldom lead to a good result.
1. Planning and the builder’s software that plans it
2. Use the planning software to its full capacity
3. Plan in detail, plan far in the future, and work the plan every day
4. Plan accountable actions, not conceptual intentions
5. Make swift owner decisions long before they’re needed, and stick to them, so they can be planned ahead
6. Use the software as a tool to plan the future, not record the past.
Are you sensing a trend here? ;)
For all projects in between, there are several platforms out there for scheduling, and the builder should be using one of them. If they are the right size builder, they should have the right scheduling tool for your project. These days, the owner should also have equal and read-only access to the scheduling software.
You can’t hold people accountable for what you suspect, only what you measure. This means tracking:
a.) the number of trips to the store per week on any given job
b.) who left the jobsite to do the shopping
c. ) how much they spent
d. ) the time of purchase.
Fortunately, you can easily get all this info from the paper receipts you get from the field each week, so the tracking and reporting is easy and cheap.
Next, creating achievable business processes that the field staff will follow, and giving them the tools to do so is key, in addition to creating solid company policies.. We can help you set that all up.
By VERY careful management of the payment schedule, as well as strict accountability for planning and execution of the closeout process. There are several ways to achieve this accountability, starting with a comprehensive project schedule with clear assignments for specific actions by every party at the right level of detail for closing out a project. Conceptual intentions won’t cut it. Exact actions required by exact people in an exact sequence on exact dates is the best way to prescribe a process that makes certain your project will be completed in a timely manner.
Two things. First, by reviewing each and every clause, and making sure that it's weighted evenly between you and your client, protecting both of you in the process. Second, by interviewing your finance and project management staff — the people who see the results of your contract in action. It's easy to construct contract clauses that plug your revenue leaks, and sometimes maybe not so easy to create and implement the operational systems that support them. We can help you with both.
By making sure you have retained the required expertise. Architects know their trade, and builders know theirs. Vista Foundry can provide both areas of expertise as well as a forensic eye for both site conditions and documentation in a single conversation.
By making it a transparent process that delivers incredible value to a grateful owner, rather than an obscured product that must be rightfully justified to an understandably skeptical owner.
The owner is paying the architect to get the right people on board at the right time, giving everyone the right information just when they need it. In the case of costing, the process should start early and carry through the completion of design specifications, always narrowing in on a known and acceptable target amount for construction. Everybody wins, and more portfolio projects get built!
By paying project managers for what they know instead of what they do.
Of all the project management functions for any given job, only 12.% require the highest level of experience and expertise. By shifting to a team-based model of known periodic accountabilities, 88% of project management functions can be done by junior staff!
Shifting models frees up your top staff to focus on the things that only they can do, thus enabling them to do just those things for more projects in any given month.
An added bonus is that giving junior staff responsibility for more functions provides them with solid professional growth opportunities, making them more valuable employees to you, themselves, and the owners. A win all the way around.
Obviously, this is a far more complex subject than can be addressed here. Let us know if you’d like to speak with us about it.
Use your website to stress the process that you deliver over the talents you possess. Your talents in architectural design or the ability to manage and build portfolio projects will be obvious to everyone enjoying the images you have worked so hard to create over the years.
Our culture is moving toward a software interface experience, not just the end result.
Both criteria can be satisfied by a well crafted, automated process on your website that walks potential clients through what is absolutely important to them—and tells you what you need to know to determine if this is a good match for your firm. All that’s left is the implementation. We can help you with that.
First of all, we’re so sorry that this has happened! We’ve seen this a lot, and we know it’s hard.
So many things to consider!
Whether you are the owner, the architect, or the builder, what's most important here is to put in place a 3-step plan that considers all the possible outcomes of any action you may be contemplating.
Step 2 — Recovery Plan: What needs to happen? Who will do it? In what order do things need to happen to put my project back on track? The Recovery Sequence will map out the shortest distance between how things are right now and the day when the project is running smoothly again.
Step 3 — New Contracts: Get the project back on track ASAP with clear agreements that provide a clear road forward.
When projects crash, it’s usually because agreements were either unclear or simply not kept. Maybe payments were made too soon or not soon enough. Maybe there was a significant misunderstanding or the paperwork wasn't clear. Maybe the project just wasn't set up correctly in the first place. Whatever the reason, it probably involved information failing to flow in some way.
We can draw on our extensive industry experience in project recoveries to help you put your project back on track ASAP with a solid recovery plan, clear agreements and information flows with either your existing providers or new ones, and most importantly, a clear path forward.
Maybe not. A significant number of people who go through natural disasters such as flood, fire, earthquakes, etc. find out only after the fact that their policy's rebuild costs were not kept up-to-date on a regular basis. That does not often end well.
Set up a full review with your agent to ask them about this. Policies are usually put in place at the time of sale, then simply renewed each year without much or any review. While your agent simply cannot know what the true rebuild costs are, it’s a good start to review all the areas and types of coverage you have. Remember, it’s not their job to make sure you are fully protected for construction costs that they are not skilled in creating.
Yes. Analytics generally come in two flavors: trending over time and specific answers to specific questions. Your accounting software should be optimized for its ability to deliver crucial KPI's (see other FAQs in this section), but since it may not be able to deliver all the data and insight you need.
Definitely not—or very rarely. The building department’s function is to ensure human health and safety, not to verify workmanship or manage owner’s investments in their property, so they almost never inspect for or approve waterproofing. Your architect should be providing this service as part of the construction management portion of their contract. Most architects will include construction management in their contracts, either as a standard part of their contract, or as an additional service. This is always money well spent for both the best long-term results and the owner’s budget.
It's easy to see almost everything with Google maps, Zillow, online municipal records, and similar tools. You’ll be able to quickly surmise noise and traffic levels, fire and flood risk, proximity to desired markets or infrastructures, slopes and views, hopefully photos and 3D walk-throughs, and almost all relevant property data that then compels a site visit.
Best Practices FAQs for all Services
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Quite a few, depending on how many you decide to keep in paper form. 24” x 36” documents can be challenging to keep organized, and knowing which documents you need to keep and which to recycle is key. 8.5” x 11” documents are much easier, and a file cabinet or temporary file box with hanging files and manila folders will do the job just fine. The challenge with these docs is version control, especially with hand annotations using red pens and highlighters. Annotated docs will need to be scanned and sent out, then filed, either digitally or left on just paper.
Of course. They have seen this a thousand times, and have procedures in place to facilitate significant changes in your proposed project. Your architect should know all about this.
The answer to that question depends on:
- your project budget,
- your level of risk tolerance,
- how long you think you will be occupying or using the structure.
If you intend to "age in place," the last thing you want to be paying for in your 80s is ripping up that tile deck you installed at the peak of your earning years, because the whole thing has to be redone. Cost savings now may turn out to be "penny wise and pound foolish" later. You may be glad for a short time that you saved money on the initial installation, only to deeply regret that choice not-enough years later when you're faced with the option of ripping it all out and redoing it, or just "chasing leaks" for the rest of your stewardship of that property — and then dealing with the buyer’s inspection report or worse, their attorney after the next hard rain.
See the other FAQs in this section for more info.
It’s just this: You know your project will never cost less than that.
Even better, the savings you realize are many times the cost to realize them. So Why wouldn’t you do that?
However, this can be enhanced by structuring the chart of accounts to maximize analytic output, producing as many current company or project Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as possible, knowing that trending KPIs may need to be tracked elsewhere.
My experience is that bookkeepers and accountants are rarely focussed on KPI analytics, being of course far more concerned with the immediacy of payroll, and the ultimate goal of filing returns. It takes an excel expert to also crank out useful analytics, and bookkeepers don’t always fit that description.
But it’s something that you can certainly outsource easily enough. Let’s talk.
Having a complete record of everything you lost in the disaster. In the 1900s, these records were almost always lost in the disaster itself. Now all of our data lives (or should live) in the cloud, accessible anytime from anywhere. One of the most important things is to make sure you have the data to begin with. Lists, images of receipts, and photographs are all invaluable to track the loss of objects, but it's hard to recreate entire structures without a 3-D scan of the structure itself and all the other assets of, in or on the property.
See the other FAQ’s in this section for more information.
With modern equipment and a much smaller structure, a 3-D scan of your property or space can be completed in anywhere from a few hours to a few days.
Even better, you’ll also have all the necessary data to create a complete and accurate floor plan for any projects you may want to do in the future!
There are quite a few reasons why some projects may not be a good match for your firm- too big, too small, unrealistic owner expectations, not your specialty, etc. Asking the right questions in the right order and right away is a good start.
Recording those answers in a standardized format for a review before spending several hours in a conversation that serves no-one is a good next step. We can help you design a series of questions and a process to go with them that works best for your firm and for your market segment.
This will also free up the principal's or other decision-maker’s time that is far better spent on creating income for the firm.
For more info, see below for automation implementation.
And for almost all projects, it's easy to trace the problem back to poor, mismanaged, or simply non-existent information flows — systems not followed, or worse, no system at all. When you are investing your own money, it's always a good idea to make sure that everyone has the information they need at the right time and in the right form to get their job done quickly and correctly. Advocating for yourself is the key here, and skimping on systems because reasons almost always leads to poor results, and often higher costs.
Unlike public works projects, which have offices full of people whose only job is to manage information flows among project team members, in residential and light commercial projects, this process can be ad hoc or practically nonexistent. And in hindsight we say "if only we (or they) had known...."
I always like the analogy of “The Two Vacations.” Imagine they are in the exact same place, the exact same length, the weather’s exactly the same, and you do the exact same activities. The only difference between them is the planning.
In the first vacation, you planned everything well in advance. Every hotel, flight, and car rental, all activities vetted and chosen, and you packed all the right gear.
In the second vacation, you just showed up at the airport one day on the spur of the moment, with no planning at all, and hoped all the same plans and all the same activities would somehow turn out OK.
Which vacation ended up costing more? Which one delivered everything you wanted? Construction is no different: no planning, no systems, no clear road ahead almost always leads to getting less and spending more.
Over decades, we have found that 25-30% of proposed projects are revealed in the end to be non-viable; usually because of costs, but not always. If there is even a small chance that the project you intend may not be viable after all, you’ll want to find out ASAP, before you’ve spent money on designing something you won’t be building.
Here’s another true statement: Nobody ever picks up a document of project costs for the first time and exclaims with a broad smile “That’s all?? When do we start?”. No, sometimes it’s “Not a chance,” but more often it’s some form of “Well, now what? How do we get these costs down to a level that fits our financial goals for the project?” (And when is that not a good question in any case?)
Remember, this is an iterative process, not a single product, and is designed to hone in on an eventual contract amount for the builder. For more info, see below for The Three Stages of Value Engineering.
"A Picture is worth 1,000 words" is just as true in the 21st century as it was in the 1900s. Modern data visualizations can provide content and context — both the hard data and a framework for understanding it.
These visualizations can be not only informative, but also emotionally compelling, depending on how the data is structured in the presentation. No longer limited to simple charts and graphs, modern presentation design techniques, principles, and software can provide the message you wish to convey without relying on a lay person's ability to read pages of arcane text or understand poorly conceived and implemented graphs.
Everyone will have a different answer for this question, but whether or not you intend to recover or continue your professional relationships, it’s usually best to make every effort to address the issues that caused the crash before taking this step.
Also, if you are contemplating firing a provider, be sure to read your contract carefully for your responsibilities for termination spelled out for both parties and follow. them. to. the. letter., whenever possible.
HOWEVER… If you have retained an attorney to advise you, of course their counsel overrides the general advice meant for no one in particular here.
Oversight, oversight, oversight! It's important to put inspection protocols in place that are agreed to by all parties and accurately priced by the builder before construction begins, so that everyone understands their roles in the process and expectations can be completely met. These inspection protocols are usually carried out by your architect during construction. In some cases, this may also involve inspections by manufacturers’ representatives to ensure that their warranties can be met.
Most architects will include construction management in their contracts, either as a standard part of their contract, or as an additional service. This is always money well spent for both the best long-term results and the owner’s budget.
See the other FAQs in this section for more info.
Oh yes — there are multiple products on the market from many different manufacturers who offer complete and integrated systems whose components are chemically engineered to all work together for the best possible result.
See the other FAQs in this section for more info.
Not at all, and the time that you need to know whether or not you intend to rebuild is immediately following the disaster, not a year later after spending quite a bit of time and money on plans, engineering, and permits.
It's bad enough losing your home, what's worse is not knowing if you can rebuild or not until you spend a lot of money to find out. Taking the insurance money you get, selling the property, and moving to Hawaii is absolutely a viable option, and again, the time that you want to know is the next morning after the disaster, not a year and a LOT of cash spent later.
All this will allow your clients to get on with their lives, allowing you to move on with their case.
ASAP, of course! Generally speaking, it's after conceptual design, and before any structural engineering or planning department submission. And definitely before you start picking out finishes for flooring, lighting, etc.
This varies greatly from carrier to carrier, project to project, city to city, and state to state. Cognitive biases can lull us into a false sense of security. Until they don’t. That’s what insurance is for, and your own tolerance of risk should be reflected in the policies you demand from others or put in place yourself. Sleeping easy at night comes from knowing that your coverage fits your risk tolerance, is adequate for your project, and meets all legal requirements, as well as your own carrier.
1. Scenarios: The builder provides separate sub-totals for different main elements of the project, such as the landscaping, the structural upgrades, the kitchen, the door replacements—whatever fits your project. These elements are combined in different ways to create different Scenarios of what your total project may look like, allowing you to prioritize which ones are most important to you. (Backyard band gazebos often don’t make the cut.)
2. Options and Alternates, where you start getting into the details with different choices within your final choice Scenario. Options are things you may or may not do, like a giant skylight or no giant skylight. Alternates are things you will do, but might be a good place to Value Engineer the project down a bit. So that’s a “Yes” on the skylight, but maybe not so big (and maybe not with a built-in DJ sound and lighting system after all?).
3. Competitive Bidding of the project at the subcontractor level before and during construction. The savings can be split with the builder or passed on to the owner, either one by one, or tracked as a whole and paid out if certain goals are met as an incentive to the builder. Not every Builder is either willing to do so as part of their business model, or able to do so without the systems in place to track that activity. But every year the software improves, and it becomes easier to offer this kind of transparency and advocacy as an obviously better service to win more contracts.
They use software they wrote for their own purposes. As you can imagine, that software is designed to be used by adjusters, not builders, and to produce a single number in the least amount of time (what adjusters do for a living).
It is not at all configured to make sure to include everything (what builders do for a living), and the information layout design from insurance adjusters gives us the distinct impression that it is meant to obscure rather than reveal. This presents a challenge when you are trying to maximize your award.
The key is to counteroffer with your own information, created by builders whose software is designed to show and include every possible expense, and especially designed to categorize those expenses in the coverages exactly as provided for in the policy.
This is obviously a complex issue, and we can assist you through the process.
Right?!? Even after cleaning it all up, I still have in excess of 150 accounts. Apparently they are needed to live these days, and it’s likely to get worse. A tracking system and enforceable company policies that support it is the only way.
Unless you have construction industry experience, as an owner you probably don't have enough expertise in modern building standards and techniques to know if products are being installed or constructed according to:
- the manufacturer’s specifications
- the architect's direction
- industry best practices
This uncertainty can leave the owner in an uncomfortable place, not being sure if things are being done correctly or not. Most architects will include construction management in their contracts, either as a standard part of their contract, or as an additional service. This is always money well spent for both the best long-term results and the owner’s budget.
Another alternative is for the owner’s rep to prescribe, in writing, a clear path of quality control inspections done by some combination of the owner, architect, and builder at specific points in the process that everyone agrees to ahead of time. This is NOT an “I don’t trust my builder” conversation. It’s simply the owner advocating for themselves as a good consumer in a process that protects everyone (including the builder!) from the unintended consequences of potential misunderstandings.
Every company is different, and requires different types of analytics in order to improve operational efficiency, reduce overhead, or get a clear view of the profitability of any given project. We can certainly help you to make the most of your software, starting with creating a prioritized list of all the KPIs you need to sharpen your business, then deciding how they will be produced and who will produce them. Finally, we’ll reconfigure your chart of accounts to automate as much as possible.
Paying for work that isn’t complete is the worst thing you can do. Of all the project recoveries we’ve seen, this is a leading cause of a project crash.
There are several "best consumer practices" to make sure that contractual obligations are met by both parties, ensuring safe and swift payments to keep the project moving along quickly, starting with each party fully understanding and following the contractual obligations they agreed to upon signing.
Beyond understanding and adhering to the contract, invoices should be configured to be easily readable, compliant with legal requirements for your state, and contain enough detail to answer most questions that might arise from the owner. The invoice should answer far more questions than it raises.
There are often "special circumstances" that may affect or place conditions on a payment in order to achieve fairness for both parties and keep the job moving. These nuances are best handled by a professional who understands the implications of any proposed payment, not just the amount. Amounts are easy. Implications, not so much.
With an owner’s rep, you can be confident that knowledgeable professionals are working on your behalf to make sure problems don’t happen.
There is a straight and economical line between "now" and the day construction begins. It answers the question: "How do I get there spending the least amount of money?” By definition, any deviation from that line almost always costs more. The secret is never to find yourself saying "I wish we had known that before."
It's rare that a property owner or a lessor of a commercial space will be able to accurately sequence the steps of that straight line. Best Consumer Practices dictate that the Owner bring this question up again and again with their design team, advocating for themselves and their budget.
Beyond that, the next Best Practices for an Owner are:
1. Swift and final decisions.
2. Print and read everything sent to you, marking it up for questions and clarifications.
3. If you have both the time and inclination, offer to participate, and be prepared for swift follow-throughs.
4. Educate yourself. You’re about to spend a lot of money on construction, and it’s up to you to make sure it gets spent wisely. Know that “knowing just enough to make you dangerous” can be attenuated with open and engaged curiosity.
5. Ask questions. Most professionals are happy to instruct and inform, but lay people, no matter what industry, pretending they know more than they do will seldom lead to a good result.
1. Planning and the builder’s software that plans it
2. Use the planning software to its full capacity
3. Plan in detail, plan far in the future, and work the plan every day
4. Plan accountable actions, not conceptual intentions
5. Make swift owner decisions long before they’re needed, and stick to them, so they can be planned ahead
6. Use the software as a tool to plan the future, not record the past.
Are you sensing a trend here? ;)
For all projects in between, there are several platforms out there for scheduling, and the builder should be using one of them. If they are the right size builder, they should have the right scheduling tool for your project. These days, the owner should also have equal and read-only access to the scheduling software.
You can’t hold people accountable for what you suspect, only what you measure. This means tracking:
a.) the number of trips to the store per week on any given job
b.) who left the jobsite to do the shopping
c. ) how much they spent
d. ) the time of purchase.
Fortunately, you can easily get all this info from the paper receipts you get from the field each week, so the tracking and reporting is easy and cheap.
Next, creating achievable business processes that the field staff will follow, and giving them the tools to do so is key, in addition to creating solid company policies.. We can help you set that all up.
By VERY careful management of the payment schedule, as well as strict accountability for planning and execution of the closeout process. There are several ways to achieve this accountability, starting with a comprehensive project schedule with clear assignments for specific actions by every party at the right level of detail for closing out a project. Conceptual intentions won’t cut it. Exact actions required by exact people in an exact sequence on exact dates is the best way to prescribe a process that makes certain your project will be completed in a timely manner.
Two things. First, by reviewing each and every clause, and making sure that it's weighted evenly between you and your client, protecting both of you in the process. Second, by interviewing your finance and project management staff — the people who see the results of your contract in action. It's easy to construct contract clauses that plug your revenue leaks, and sometimes maybe not so easy to create and implement the operational systems that support them. We can help you with both.
By making sure you have retained the required expertise. Architects know their trade, and builders know theirs. Vista Foundry can provide both areas of expertise as well as a forensic eye for both site conditions and documentation in a single conversation.
By making it a transparent process that delivers incredible value to a grateful owner, rather than an obscured product that must be rightfully justified to an understandably skeptical owner.
The owner is paying the architect to get the right people on board at the right time, giving everyone the right information just when they need it. In the case of costing, the process should start early and carry through the completion of design specifications, always narrowing in on a known and acceptable target amount for construction. Everybody wins, and more portfolio projects get built!
By paying project managers for what they know instead of what they do.
Of all the project management functions for any given job, only 12.% require the highest level of experience and expertise. By shifting to a team-based model of known periodic accountabilities, 88% of project management functions can be done by junior staff!
Shifting models frees up your top staff to focus on the things that only they can do, thus enabling them to do just those things for more projects in any given month.
An added bonus is that giving junior staff responsibility for more functions provides them with solid professional growth opportunities, making them more valuable employees to you, themselves, and the owners. A win all the way around.
Obviously, this is a far more complex subject than can be addressed here. Let us know if you’d like to speak with us about it.
Use your website to stress the process that you deliver over the talents you possess. Your talents in architectural design or the ability to manage and build portfolio projects will be obvious to everyone enjoying the images you have worked so hard to create over the years.
Our culture is moving toward a software interface experience, not just the end result.
Both criteria can be satisfied by a well crafted, automated process on your website that walks potential clients through what is absolutely important to them—and tells you what you need to know to determine if this is a good match for your firm. All that’s left is the implementation. We can help you with that.
First of all, we’re so sorry that this has happened! We’ve seen this a lot, and we know it’s hard.
So many things to consider!
Whether you are the owner, the architect, or the builder, what's most important here is to put in place a 3-step plan that considers all the possible outcomes of any action you may be contemplating.
Step 2 — Recovery Plan: What needs to happen? Who will do it? In what order do things need to happen to put my project back on track? The Recovery Sequence will map out the shortest distance between how things are right now and the day when the project is running smoothly again.
Step 3 — New Contracts: Get the project back on track ASAP with clear agreements that provide a clear road forward.
When projects crash, it’s usually because agreements were either unclear or simply not kept. Maybe payments were made too soon or not soon enough. Maybe there was a significant misunderstanding or the paperwork wasn't clear. Maybe the project just wasn't set up correctly in the first place. Whatever the reason, it probably involved information failing to flow in some way.
We can draw on our extensive industry experience in project recoveries to help you put your project back on track ASAP with a solid recovery plan, clear agreements and information flows with either your existing providers or new ones, and most importantly, a clear path forward.
Maybe not. A significant number of people who go through natural disasters such as flood, fire, earthquakes, etc. find out only after the fact that their policy's rebuild costs were not kept up-to-date on a regular basis. That does not often end well.
Set up a full review with your agent to ask them about this. Policies are usually put in place at the time of sale, then simply renewed each year without much or any review. While your agent simply cannot know what the true rebuild costs are, it’s a good start to review all the areas and types of coverage you have. Remember, it’s not their job to make sure you are fully protected for construction costs that they are not skilled in creating.
Yes. Analytics generally come in two flavors: trending over time and specific answers to specific questions. Your accounting software should be optimized for its ability to deliver crucial KPI's (see other FAQs in this section), but since it may not be able to deliver all the data and insight you need.
Definitely not—or very rarely. The building department’s function is to ensure human health and safety, not to verify workmanship or manage owner’s investments in their property, so they almost never inspect for or approve waterproofing. Your architect should be providing this service as part of the construction management portion of their contract. Most architects will include construction management in their contracts, either as a standard part of their contract, or as an additional service. This is always money well spent for both the best long-term results and the owner’s budget.
It's easy to see almost everything with Google maps, Zillow, online municipal records, and similar tools. You’ll be able to quickly surmise noise and traffic levels, fire and flood risk, proximity to desired markets or infrastructures, slopes and views, hopefully photos and 3D walk-throughs, and almost all relevant property data that then compels a site visit.
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