Design Phases

Each project phase is dependent on the work of the previous phase—it builds on that work, and also places limits on the work of the succeeding phases. The design phases are especially interdependent in this way, and this interdependence bears discussion before we describe each phase.

Every Design Is Unique

At each step in the micro and macro processes, the owner and design team make decisions. The completed design is an accumulation of thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of discrete decisions, and the result is a unique

Figure 3.1 Comparison of Project Phases

Source: Author

response to the owner’s needs. The building committee chair for a new arts center, who was also the head of a large manufacturing company, told the architect he didn’t want his new arts center to be “serial number one.” The architect replied that his firm had designed many arts centers and that this new building would be a “production model” not a prototype. This was an appropriate and reassuring response to the client’s underlying anxiety. But it was disingenuous, since every new arts building by definition is “serial number one.”

Cost Savings Are Less Over Time

It’s also at the outset that the owner has the best opportunity to control project costs. About 20 percent of design fees are spent during the pre-design and schematic design phases, but it’s during these two phases that the decisions affecting 80 percent of the cost are made. The opportunity to reduce cost diminishes as the design decisions become more limited in scope.

To illustrate, here’s a hypothetical example about a dance rehearsal room.

Pre-Design and Schematic Design

Should a dance rehearsal room be included in our new building? Questions about including (or excluding) significant building elements are appropriate for pre-design and still possible in the schematic design phase. The owner’s decision on the rehearsal room will change the construction cost by $500,000 or more. Let’s say the owner decides to increase the budget and the dance rehearsal room is integrated into the schematic design. The dance instructor is quite happy.

Design Development

The rehearsal room’s finishes and services are defined in the design development phase. A maple basket weave floor is detailed, and an appropriate audiovisual system is specified. Dance barres, large mirrors, and curtains to cover the mirrors are shown on the drawings. The structural, HVAC, and electrical systems are defined.

At the end of design development the project cost estimate comes in high. The owner might be regretting the decision to add the dance rehearsal room, but the room is well integrated into the overall design and removing it now is not very feasible. The design team would have to redo significant work, which would delay the project and may require additional fees.

How else can costs be reduced? The total cost of the barres, mirrors, curtains, and audiovisual system might be $100,000. These items could be removed from the construction contract and furnished by the owner. This does not actually reduce the cost but shifts it to another budget or defers it to a later date. How about the basket weave floor? It’s desirable for dance, but it’s expensive and requires an extra deep slab depression. A simpler floor construction would cost less and may reduce the cost of structure as well. The dance instructor consults with colleagues and agrees the simpler floor is acceptable. The less costly floor saves $50,000, so the floor is changed.

Contract Documents

In the contract documents phase, the structural engineer designs and details the building structure to accommodate the less expensive floor. The architect specifies and details the floor and the edge conditions where the maple surface meets surrounding floor finishes. If more savings are needed, our choices now are quite limited. We could switch the top layer of the floor from 25/32″ T&G (tongue & groove) maple to 3/4″ Plyron sheets. This requires just a few changes to the floor details and specification, and doesn’t affect other parts of the design. This change saves $5,000.

Bidding and Construction

Once the bids for construction are received, it’s no longer a question of reducing costs but of avoiding additional costs in the form of change orders. Suppose a donor emerges during construction who wishes to pay the cost of adding back the maple surface. This requires changes to agreements with the contractors and suppliers. The Plyron is probably on order; it may even be on the jobsite. The cost to change the top surface from Plyron to maple will likely be $10,000 to $15,000—much more than the $5,000 we saved in the change from maple to Plyron.

Of course, the owner can cancel or significantly revise the project at any point in design, but the cost of doing so increases as the project progresses. Major changes made late in the design process can be very expensive and can delay the project. For this reason it’s critical to spend adequate time on the early project phases. And to protect everyone, the results of each phase should be well documented and signed off by the owner before the next phase is begun.

Figure 3.2 Opportunity for Savings Versus Design Fees Spent

Source: Author

With this background, let’s move on to a description of each of the conventional phases.

Pre-Design

Pre-design may also be called pre-schematic, programming, project feasibility, or various other names. The basic questions that pre-design answers are:

• What are the needs to be addressed?
• Is a new or renovated building the right response to those needs?
• What should be built or renovated? What kinds and numbers of rooms should the building have? In other words, what is the building program?
• How much will the project cost and how much is the owner able and willing to spend? That is, what is the project budget?

Pre-design may be performed by the owner without the involvement of any consultants, but most owners do not have the necessary resources and expertise. More often a consultant or a team of consultants is engaged—this team may be led by an architect, theater planner, arts management consultant, or by a consultant who specializes in architectural programming services. Once pre-design is complete, the same team may be retained for complete design services, or the owner may advertise for a new design team. On some publicly funded projects, the pre-design team is prohibited from performing the subsequent design work.

The result of pre-design should be a building program (a complete description of the building in words and numbers) reconciled to a project budget (more numbers). Owners and architects sometimes have the urge to jump right into design, but pre-design is a critical first step that should not be shortchanged. It will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 5.

Schematic Design

A primary task of schematic design is to organize the building, both functionally and aesthetically. The functional goal is to establish the sizes, shapes, and locations of each interior room, and to work out the best adjacencies and circulation paths between rooms. As noted in the first chapter, a theater has many individual rooms with unique requirements, making this a challenging task. The aesthetic goal is to make sense of the building massing—that is, the shape and appearance of the building as a sculptural object—and to fit the design into the context of the surrounding buildings or landscape.

There are projects in which the exterior form of the building was decided first, and the interior program elements were accommodated as best as possible within this form. The Sydney Opera House is a famous example of “designing from the outside in.” At the other extreme, the appearance of some theater buildings suggests a functional plan was established, and exterior walls and roofs were added, with no thought to the aesthetics of the building form. This is “designing from the inside out.” Neither approach is satisfactory. The functional and aesthetic goals are interdependent and must be addressed together.

This process is iterative, and will heavily involve the design architect, theater planner, and acoustician. The theater planner and acoustician will be more focused on function, and the design architect on aesthetics, but not exclusively so. These core design team members also work together to establish the basic geometry of the performance spaces. The structural engineer will advise on possible approaches to the building structure, and a preliminary structural grid will be established. The MEP engineers (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) will document the design loads for these systems, and focus on reserving adequate space for equipment rooms and duct and riser chases. The IT consultant will reserve an excessive amount of space for telecom and data rooms. In this phase, the executive architect is man aging the design team’s effort, arranging and minuting project meetings, and advising on local regulatory and construction issues. The owner and users participate in many of the meetings during this phase, though the design team may also schedule work sessions without the owner.

The schematic design package will include drawings—plans, elevations, and sections—and narratives describing materials, finishes, acoustic requirements, theater equipment and accommodation, the structural system, and MEP systems. Unless the project is quite small or the schedule is unusually fast, the design team will issue progress sets. These are labeled with a percentage indicating how complete the work of the phase is—50, 90, and 100 percent are typical. The cost model will be updated based on the 100 percent complete package, and the owner will be asked to approve both the package and the estimated cost before the next phase commences.

Design Development

The task of design development is to refine and develop the design, again both functionally and aesthetically. Ideally, a design development package reflects a completely thought out design intention. The interior architecture of the performance spaces is defined—for example, shaping and detailing of walls, ceilings, and balcony fronts. Room layouts, furniture, and equipment are shown on the drawings. The structural, mechanical, and electrical systems are fully developed and integrated with the architectural design. Materials are selected, and critical finishes are shown on the drawings.

The role of the executive architect increases significantly in design development. It’s common for both the design and executive architects to have drawings in the design development package. While the design architect continues to develop and document the interior of the building, the executive architect is probably taking ownership of the building plans, confirming the structural grid, and preparing background drawings for the engineers and consultants to use. The executive architect may begin to detail the exterior elevations, wall sections, elevators, stairs, and similar building elements.

The design development package will include hundreds of drawings prepared by the architects, engineers, theater planner, acoustician, food service

consultant, architectural lighting designer, and other design team members. Some of these drawings will be developed into contract documents in the next phase. Other drawings will not. For example, the theater planner will prepare general arrangement drawings showing special structural and electrical needs, and the acoustician may prepare building plans showing acoustic requirements for walls and doors. The requirements shown on these drawings will be incorporated into the contract documents prepared by other members of the design team.

The design development package will also include preliminary specifications, often in outline form. Almost all projects in North America and many projects elsewhere use the specification format published by the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). The CSI MasterFormat organizes the work into standard divisions, and individual systems or products are organized into sections within each division. For example, Division 05 is “Metals” and Section 05 12 00 is “Structural Steel Framing.” As a general rule, the scope of a project is shown on the drawings, while qualitative and procedural requirements are included in the specifications.

Progress sets are typically issued when the design development phase is 50, 75, 90, and 100 percent complete. The cost model may be updated midway through design development and again at the completion of the phase.

Contract Documents

The drawings and specifications prepared in this phase become part of the contract between the owner and builder—hence “contract documents.” This phase is also called working drawings or construction drawings, since the builders use these drawings to guide the work of construction. If the design development package defines a completely thought out design intention, then the task during construction documents is to coordinate and document that design for bidding and building.

At this point the executive architect is responsible for the documents, although the design architect will continue to make significant contributions. The design architect may be responsible for certain specification sections or may even prepare some of the drawings. Each of the engineering disciplines and the theater planner will prepare specifications and a significant number of drawings. The design team members who do not issue their own drawings at this phase—acoustician, architectural lighting designer, food service consultant, graphics designer, etc.—will carefully review the drawings prepared by the other design disciplines to confirm that their work and advice have been incorporated.

By way of example, at the time construction of the Overture Center in Madison, Wisconsin began, the contract documents included five bound volumes of architectural drawings and one volume each for structural, theater equipment, piping (plumbing and fire protection), mechanical (HVAC), and electrical—more than 1,000 unique drawings in all. See Table 3.2 for a description of each volume. Including revisions, the design team formally issued more than 5,000 drawings between the start of schematic design and the beginning of construction. Detailing and coordinating the work of all these design disciplines across so many sheets of drawings is a challenge, and this occupies most of the design team’s time during the contract document phase. Progress sets might be issued at 35, 65, 95, and 100 percent complete.

The extent of coordination required is often a surprise to members of the design team who are not familiar with theater buildings. If the architect has previously been suspicious of the theater planner’s statements about the project’s complexity, it’s at this point that he or she may reconsider. If the team began the contract document phase with some design issues unresolved—a common event—then the task of coordinating and detailing is made that much more difficult. And unfortunately, it’s at this critical time that the design team may be running out of time, fee, and oomph. If the 100 percent set is not completely coordinated there will be pressure to put the project out to bid anyway. The project schedule may have been stretched to its limit—construction must start before the authorizing legislation expires, before the winter sets in, or before the lead donor gets very much older! The design team has billed out 75 to 80 percent of its fees and continuing coordination efforts will eat into the profits—if there are profits. Design firms’ responses to this situation vary greatly. Some firms will reassign almost all of their project staff (presumably to money-making projects) leaving one or two poor souls to continue the coordination and detailing work. Other firms will send in a fresh and experienced “relief team” for a concerted push to finish up the documents.

Bidding

When the contract documents are complete, the project is bid or priced. (In British English this process is called tendering.) Documents that define the bidding requirements (informally called the front end) are added to the

contract documents, and the resulting package is known as the bidding documents. Builders interested in providing the work analyze the bidding documents and estimate the materials, labor, and equipment needed for construction. From their analysis, they develop and submit a price. The specifics of bidding will vary depending on the project delivery method (also called project procurement or contracting method). Procurement methods and the builder’s role in bidding and construction are discussed in Chapter 4. The design team’s role is discussed below.

The owner and design team may hold a pre-bid meeting for potential bidders. The purpose is to answer questions about the bid process and the documents, and to allow the bidders to familiarize themselves with the site conditions.

Bidders may submit questions about the documents—these are called requests for information or RFIs. Some bidding documents may require bidders to propose product substitutions for approval prior to the deadline for bid submission. The design team’s response to RFIs and substitution requests will be in the form of an addendum to the bidding documents distributed to all of the bidders. The addendum may include written responses to questions, revisions to specifications, sketches, and new or revised drawings.

Once bids are received, the design team participates in analysis of the bid results, evaluation of substitutes, and confirmation of scope. Sometimes individual pre-award conferences are held with the top two or three bidders to confirm that their bids are responsive—that is, that they conform to the substantive requirements of the bidding documents. Often on publicly funded projects, the construction contract must be awarded to the bidder who submits the lowest responsive bid. The construction contract usually stipulates both the price (called the contract sum) and the number of days before the building is expected to be ready for occupancy (contract time).

Construction Administration

The builder generally has control of the construction site and authority over the “means and materials” of construction. The construction contract requires the builder to conform to the “design intent” as described in the contract documents. The architect’s contract with the owner gives the design team the authority to interpret the contract documents for both the builder and the owner. The architect may also have the responsibility of monitoring the completeness of the work and approving the builder’s pay applications. The design team’s role during construction is therefore called construction administration.

With so much at stake, project communications and documents are treated more formally once the construction contract is awarded. The AIA publishes standard forms and other materials that can be used to manage project communications during construction, but today much of the communication is handled through project management websites.

Final Testing and Tuning

Final testing (or acceptance testing) of the theater equipment is performed by the theater planner. If the facility is to be used for music, the acoustician also tests and “tunes” the room with assistance from the theater planner. Final testing and tuning is sometimes called “commissioning.” But as commonly used in design and construction, commissioning concerns the building management system and building services—HVAC, electrical, fire alarm, etc.—and is usually performed by an independent commissioning authority or agent directly under contract to the owner. To avoid confusion, “testing and tuning” is the preferred term for what the theater planner and acoustician do.

Most performance equipment is completely custom—the British say “bespoke,” which makes one think of men’s suits. Or it is a highly customized assemblage of more or less standard pieces. In either case, we can’t really know if it all works together as planned until it’s complete and tested. The goals of final testing are to confirm that the installed equipment complies with the design intent and contract requirements, to put the equipment through its functional paces, and to coordinate final corrections and adjustments.

If an auditorium is intended for music, the acoustician will take measurements to determine how quiet the room is and how the room responds to various-sized musical ensembles. Often the acoustician takes advantage of the “hard hat” performance given for the construction workers to record the response of the room with an audience. The acoustician compares these measurements with the design criteria and proposes adjustments to the HVAC system, room finishes, etc. if required. If the room is equipped with adjustable acoustic devices—a demountable orchestra enclosure, forestage canopy, adjustable absorption, or reverberation chambers—the acoustician and theater planner work together to confirm their proper operation, determine placements and settings, and program the system controls.

Occupancy

Surprisingly, most design teams have little formal role as the owner and users take occupancy of the new building. Most construction contracts require the builder to provide training for the users in the operation and maintenance of the building systems, and the designers may monitor this training. The design team also reviews the O&M (operation and maintenance) manuals prepared by the builder, to ensure that they adequately document the building systems. And the design team may prepare record drawings for the owner’s use. These are revisions of the contract documents that incorporate the changes made during construction.

If the new building is opening with a public performance, the theater planner may attend the technical rehearsals to advise on the theater equipment systems and to help resolve any problems that may arise with the equipment. Similarly, the acoustician may attend music rehearsals. This level of involvement is almost never required by contract, however, and in some cases it may even be unwelcome.

While the owner and users are taking possession of their building, the designers and builders are marking the end of a project that has consumed several years of their professional lives. The hard hat performance mentioned above is often an opportunity to celebrate and say goodbyes. The opening performance is often a fundraising event for the owner, but the design team members will appreciate the opportunity to attend, whether tickets are complimentary or paid.