Seibert: CANCO delivers optimal solutions through value engineering
4 years, 7 months ago
Tim Seibert, P.E.
President, Carl A. Nelson & Company
In the Spring 2020 issue of wibi (Industrial | Healthcare), we are featuring our value engineering services. You will find a description of these services and many examples of successful delivery. Carl A. Nelson & Co. excels at delivering outstanding value engineering services and here I will address why we are well equipped to do that.
Experience has shown us how value engineering can have a positive impact for our customers, and because of that, we put a lot of emphasis on this aspect of our pre-construction services.
When we organize and assign personnel to a project, we create a project climate that supports collaboration among the owner, design team and ourselves that allows the best solutions to the Owner’s business needs to be developed and implemented. We obtain or help develop clear and concise overall owner project goals — which always include schedule and budget goals for the project — and we honor them in the value engineering process.
It is surprising how often projects can get off track of the owner’s objectives.
Yet if we are engaged on a project early enough, we are able to start the value engineering process at the inception of design, and provide timely input so the ideas can be incorporated into the design in concert with the normal design rhythm. This makes all potential design options available for consideration, and does not result in design rework and the associated costs and time of rework. We have found the quickest way to sour a collaborative process is to have the value engineering process cause design rework.
Fifty percent of our business is delivered under the design-build delivery method, and most of the rest is delivered under the construction management delivery method, which includes us providing design-assist. As a result, we have extensive experience delivering pre-construction services, especially value engineering. We have design and construction personnel with expertise in both design and construction, and they include two licensed architects, three licensed engineers and thirteen engineering graduates. When we are in general contractor or construction manager roles, we get the opportunity to review a lot of drawings prepared by a variety of outside design firms. Because of this, we get to see a lot of good design ideas and approaches, and we incorporate the best ideas into our value engineering analysis.
We believe our value engineering role is to provide good information, including cost ramifications — which are frequently not part of the discussion until later when the project is over budget — to support good design decisions by the project team.
Finding the optimal facility solutions through value engineering to meet our clients’ business needs is one of the most satisfying and fun things we do, and we look forward to doing this for you.