Happy Building Design (C04)

The business case described here is a happy situation for all parties involved suggesting a win-win situation. It is a genuine case and happened from 2022-06 to 2023-02. The background is the design process for a new building to be constructed. The writer is a Compucon project director in digital technology applications. The reasons to undertake this building construction project management (or being accepted to undertake) were the offer of free design for digitalization of the building and a good track record of project management respectively. This case study was written in a layman language and should be easy for all readers to appreciate the applied management philosophies, to share the joy of win-win success, and to obtain reflections for personal use. Since the project described is current and commercially sensitive, all names are not mentioned other than the place of occurrence being Auckland.

Resource Consent was obtained by the developer in 2022-03 for 1040 sqm of residential spaces including a café and off-street carparking. The next step of the project is Developed Design during which the architect will finetune the approved Resource Consent design to include features outside the scope of Resource on sent. An unforeseen event emerged. The design was found to incur a ‘load-support transfer structure’ which would push up the construction cost. The total cost of development was estimated to exceed the market price of the building when completed. In the meantime, Covid hit our architect firm hard to the extent that
the architect could not continue to work on this project. The writer was brought in to advise the best way forward in terms of cost, timing, and quality of the project. The writer was happy to jump in for the view that the situation did not look nice and proper efforts would only make things look better.

The writer advised to reduce the number of terraced houses on the podium by one. This reduction would eliminate the ‘load-support-transfer structure’ problem. The writer also advised to turn the top level of penthouses to standard ensuite in order to increase the market price of the building. The cost reduction and price increase should help but may not be enough to guarantee a turnaround.

We talked to several new architects about options and ran into one who attempted to push the envelope within the limits of the Council. The subsequent efforts did succeed to add more ceiling heights and floor areas to all residential units. It is a process of rationalization.

Happiness did not stop there. The writer convinced the town planner that the latest design stayed within the terms of the Council as given in the Consent approval. Instead of submitting a full application for Resource Consent to account for all the changes made, we submitted a Consent Variation application.

Variation approval was obtained in 2023-02 from the Council. All parties involved were very happy especially the developer, the architect, and the writer. The writer further believed that the rationalization approach should lead to reduced Developed Design efforts.

Why should readers of this article be happy too? The fact that the writer is neither an architect nor a town planner was able to manage the above process successfully implies that all readers can be in the same position if not already there. The happiness can apply to all sorts of projects including but not exclusively building construction. Feel free to discuss or ask for more information.