Just recently I came across an industry whitepaper from FMI Insights that noted that project complexity has been increasing.
My overarching question to the A/E community is: Are we now at a point where our building designs are just too complicated? My knee-jerk reaction is “Yes”, but I am curious to hear what others think.
If we agree that ‘yes designs are getting more complicated’, the first question is “why?”.
Many reasons, but here are a few:
- Manufacturers are often the ones creating new details, to implement their (new) products. Each time there is a new building product on the market, they often come with their own specific and proprietary details. Some may not be “industry standard”.
- Architectural firms have often wanted to design something new/ something innovative. This has almost always been the case; I’m not saying it is a bad thing. But many architects will have to create or use some pretty complicated detailing in order to bring their vision to reality.
- The 3-year cycle for building and energy codes. This may be most important reason for building design getting more complicated as the years progress. The Codes are continuously demanding more from the building, so often that means new detailing.
In my opinion, from the CM standpoint, all of this (above) adds both time and also cost to a construction project.
For project schedule, we all know that owners/developers (and lenders) seem to be constricting the overall durations. For the most part we have less time to build out a project now than we did 10-15 years ago. That said, how do we finish the construction in LESS time when the building is getting harder to physically build?
And then we get to project/construction costs. More difficult details generally take more time, thus adding to the labor costs (and sometimes also the material costs) of a project. We all are aware that project costs continue to climb, year-over-year- for a variety of reasons. In every case, someone is paying for those costs. That said, many developers or owners elect to simply not build at all when the initial project numbers come in too high. Generally speaking, that is not a great thing for the broader AEC community.
I’ll sign off with an example of a real-life scenario which shows how reality can undermine Codes or good intentions with building design.
Several years back the state legislature of Vermont chose to update and upgrade their residential building and energy code. The newer Code was supposed to take effect in July 2023.
However, a few months prior to this 2023 threshold a group of Vermont builders and contractors heavily steered the legislature to delay the new broad code measure. Their main reason: The contractors (field staff) did not know physically how to install/implement the new Code requirements in a satisfactory fashion. The construction industry in the region was not adequately trained, at that time. So, the State ended up delaying the new Code by 1 year, to try to allow the contractors to “catch up”. Just an example of what politicians wanted did not line up with reality on the ground.
What are your thoughts? Do you think the Code’s (IBC etc) main objective leads to increasingly complicated building design? How much more complex can it get- or should it get?
by Ken Lambert, CSI, CSL
