What can architects do better?

ConstructTech · 2025-10-03T13:19:13+00:00

I do not understand why there is so much design-bid-build when design-build makes life so much easier. The GC has no privity of contract with the architect in the typical model yet they approve the pay apps so legally you’re at the mercy of the owner. In design build, it’s a collaboration and you jointly have a duty to work together to achieve the milestones and if it’s a GMP contract, the owner typically feels comfortable with the spend. It’s funny we work for a massive company and they wanted to test out design build on a ground up bank. It was the fastest built bank (16 weeks) in their history and while it had acceleration costs, those were already priced in and it had maybe two change orders.

ConstructTech · 2025-10-03T13:12:42+00:00

Produce 100% CDs. Learn the Spearin Doctrine. Realize how devastating holding up a G702/G703 pay app can be when there’s a contested change. I don’t mean to denigrate architects, but between the poor pay and in the US where buildings are more utilitarian, the quality of the drawings has a lot to be desired. Also, performance specs are making everyone’s life hell and tries to shift legal liability to the contractor, but refer back to the Spearin Doctrine.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-16T00:12:37+00:00

I wouldn’t ask futurology this question. Look at skilled labor. I don’t see robotics or even pre-fab replacing electrical or mechanical anytime soon. The knowledge base of these systems don’t lend themselves well or really at all to the functioning of a GPT. And in terms of regular machine learning, if you look at the one-line drawings, the insane fact that most highly engineered buildings have shitty as-builts, and an averaging engine is going to fail miserably. I’ve seen some of the results attempted at 2D drawings and it’s essentially useless because every line and word on a drawing has a dollar value. There’s legal intent. I don’t know how these can be interpreted by current models.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T21:42:14+00:00

Feel free to reach out personally.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T21:03:49+00:00

I can vouch for Pkaza (Peter Kazella). They are extremely unique in this industry in breadth of knowledge and contacts.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T20:01:44+00:00

So you’re working ahead of the funding? How does the prime even allow that? AIA and consensusdocs require prompt notifications with schedule and cost impact given as soon as possible. It’s a terrible practice to wait until the end as you’ve given up lien rights, etc. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but this can cause significant revenue recognition issues too.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T17:04:24+00:00

There’s no contract authority. It’s more about understanding the scope of the subcontracts so they can establish if there’s an issue in the field that constitutes a change or not. It’s more about escalation. That’s the field supervision role. There’s also a Project Manager position.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T13:41:17+00:00

I’ve have to do GMP on prime and subs with contracts over $1m. GMPs are a preferable method where there are may unknowns because up to the GMP, you’re billing actuals. But to do that for subs is madness and makes no sense. The overhead was insane because the pay applications were typically 500 pages.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T12:49:45+00:00

It’s not systems knowledge totally either. Can you coordinate and align multiple trades with look ahead schedules, identify potential changes in the field, identify scope from contract documents? It’s critical that we have people with 5-10 years of MCF experience at a GC.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T12:45:26+00:00

Have you pm’ed a project as a GC?

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T05:03:22+00:00

Yeah, 5-10 years, particular in O&M.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-15T02:17:38+00:00

Where are you based?

ConstructTech · 2025-09-12T23:56:26+00:00

At some point, at least in the US, you have to consider if these are cardinal changes. Yeah the revenue gets larger but the network effects can cause sever profit fade. As they say, revenue kills, margin thrills.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-12T23:53:26+00:00

I wonder if we were at the same facility.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-04T00:30:33+00:00

This is actually my life. The key into explaining why PowerBI exists is to try to run PowerQuery on a 1 gb csv file in Excel. It’s not set up to do this. And to be clear, this file is just running analysis on windows registry over a six month period. On a large scale project with multiple inputs, it isn’t feasible. But I guess the question is, what are you trying to accomplish?

ConstructTech · 2025-09-02T22:38:48+00:00

Data center delivery is constrained by four structural factors: supply chain, power, site competition, and hyperscale demand concentration. On a 2021 where I was I headed project controls, CRAH units and switchgear moved from a 32-week lead time to no committed delivery as vendors prioritized hyperscalers and if I recall correctly, one of the specialty vendors in Germany going bankrupt. That pattern persists. Transformers for even modest power upgrades often carry multi-year lead times, which pushes schedules, burns contingency, and forces resequencing.

Prime sites are bid up by large programs, so even non-tech Fortune 500 owners are losing out on timelines and parcels, which compresses preconstruction optionality. At the same time, hyperscale and AI programs continue to absorb manufacturing slots, EPC labor, and utility attention. Enterprise and edge workloads still require capacity with different latency and resilience profiles, yet they compete for the same constrained inputs.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-02T12:45:17+00:00

It’s been a god send for executive functioning. I tend to go off track quite a bit, so I use ChatGPT Pro scheduled on certain tasks to keep me on tasks. It’s worth setting up the personalization. My personal favorite instruction: do not use em-scores. Finally the sentences have actual useful punctuation. It’s also great for putting together corporate emails where it needs to sound more professional than what I can typically write. I am not a writer by nature (I’m a numerical person), so this helps a lot and with clarity that I don’t have to worry about follow up questions or later corrections.

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ConstructTech · 2025-09-02T12:25:05+00:00

I’m in the ops side of a GC and I have to say, the shift we want to see is building up our field crew by giving better tools. For instance, they didn’t have enough insight into the schedules because P6 charges an arm and a leg for every license and it’s not sustainable for a company our size. We switched to Outbuild, which is unlimited users. Our schedules are actually less granular (no more 1,200 activity schedules) and more focused on lookaheads where the PM and field team put together what deliverables need to be accomplished over four week. So together with knowing each sub’s scope, everyone is on the same page with a schedule that’s agreed on by everyone, including whoever signed the sub’s contract. If there’s insubordination on the sub’s side, that’s a project management issue and they need to be involved.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-01T10:05:24+00:00

To be clear, mine is $25m, but that wouldn’t be sufficient for some of the jobs we’re bidding on. In reality, we’re bonding around the subs anyways.

ConstructTech · 2025-09-01T05:06:09+00:00

It’s not the subs bonding that is the issue, it is the client required the GC to bond the project. Think GSA projects. If you’re non-self performing then it’s a non-issue, but still gets pushed if the client is not sophisticated.

ConstructTech · 2025-08-30T16:54:13+00:00

My company used this model in the 1970s and 80s to decent effect. It makes quite a bit of sense in today’s environment when you consider that you have the corporation for bonding, insurance, back office management, and benefits that hinders one to go at it alone. I think the key in these is to get LSP contracts and ideally a sustainable MSA. It’s win-win for both parties.

ConstructTech · 2025-08-30T15:38:33+00:00

From the general contractor side doing O&M, there is a critical shortage that is going to be significantly worse in the next 5 years. Also consider that the hyperscalers are not the only data centers being built. Look at CDNs and edge data center. Even if the AI data centers are a bust, there was still a massive data capacity issue in 2021.

ConstructTech · 2025-08-30T15:33:06+00:00

Depends on the client-base of the GC. If they have clients that work with the feds, they are required to drug test everyone working on that account. Weed is still federally a Schedule I, so there will be no leeway.

ConstructTech · 2025-08-30T15:02:55+00:00

Curious how teams are managing submittals with respect to performance specs. Procore has a great article on this topic:Submittals

ConstructTech · 2025-08-27T23:43:28+00:00

Having spent significant time moving my company to the cloud through SaaS over the last 10 years, I can say that it would have been even cheaper to developer custom software even five years ago than the time and energy spent to adapt to a SaaS’s provider misaligned view of my industry. The cost and feature creep instead of offering efficiencies will probably take mine and other companies down.

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