Twenty years of practice designing large institutional buildings—from Rutgers' Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine in 1984 to Harvard University's upcoming Physical Science Research Lab—have given Boston-based William Wilson Associated Architects plenty of time to recognize the classic trouble spots on such projects. A close look at these real-life experiences produces a treasure-trove of lessons learned.

Analyzing problems from previous projects has led principal Bill Wilson and his colleagues to sort them into categories and then trace their causes back to 16 fundamental but hard-to-make decisions. Arrayed across a matrix of drivers and strategies, the decision points provide a tool that helps owners and project managers map out both the concrete and intangible aspects of a new facility that will be essential to its success.

"A new project represents transformation, and there is commonly some uncertainty about where you're going to end up," explains Wilson. "So much time and money are invested in it, and our job is to manage the risk."

Driving the Project Definition

Any project involving technically complicated environments entails literally thousands of decisions, most of them made by a core team of experienced people, including the owner, design team, users, and, occasionally, the construction manager.

Wilson's matrix groups the key decisions that will define the project into three categories according to their motivating force: Goal-driven, Parameter-driven, and Process-driven. This arrangement corresponds to the varying perspectives or constituencies represented by project team members: a focus on, respectively, the facility's vision, bottom-line, and planning and implementation (from concept to occupancy) process.

In part, this division is in response to the oft-heard institutional claim that budget and schedule are paramount, with all other aspects of the project secondary. By incorporating the two additional points of view, the matrix accommodates all three drivers, thus generating a more holistic project definition, one that anticipates the trouble spots and heads them off at the source.

"We took the 16 decisions and asked how we could step back and help project managers and owners think about them," says Wilson. “We determined that if the 16 decisions haven't been answered, the project has not been defined."

BOD vs. Schematic

According to Wilson, the traditional A/E deliverable, the schematic design, does not adequately answer the questions posed by the 16 decisions. Instead, he recommends a study called basis of design, or BOD, as a supplement to the industry-standard schematic.

"A BOD is similar to a schematic but it is aimed at more complicated buildings," he explains, noting that project definition is the first phase of any project. "You don't want to move to the next phase—construction documents and hiring contractors—until you have your arms around this first step.

"A BOD can be done more quickly than a schematic, but it includes a lot more in-depth engineering of certain critical issues in some serious areas," he continues. "For example, the schematic layout of a building doesn't answer the question of what the future use of a cleanroom might be, or what happens when utilities are relocated. These questions require some special handling."

A basis-of-design package connects complex technical needs with a specific design solution, and defines scope. It is intended to be estimated and provides an owner with a reliable budget.

"For the Harvard Physical Sciences project, we created a BOD package in two months with the owner and had it priced by two construction managers, Flour Daniel and Turner," says Wilson. That scope (which entails new construction, renovations in three buildings, and the complex parameters of a multidisciplinary nanoscience facility) and budget are still governing the project.

Wilson's decision matrix has been crafted as a checklist for clients to use to make sure the design team is working on such issues.

Three Drivers

Wilson sees the Goal-driven category as presenting the notion that each project has a special mission the organization is trying to accomplish. The category spans eight decision points: population/ratio, neighborhood, connection, flexibility, special programs, campus feel, lab culture, and shell. All relate to the underlying objective of transformation.

"We are usually dealing with owners who wish a change from the status quo," comments Wilson. "They look at the project as representing a vision, adding some capability they don't already have."

Typically, new people are recruited and new technologies are brought into a signature building, which then drives and redefines the institution's look and direction in the future.

The Parameter-driven category encompasses the approaches to three concrete aspects that will define the project: budget, schedule, and code and chemical demands.

"We call these parameters," says Wilson. "They are not reasons for a project being successful, they are constraints. The questions here are very generic: 'Can the project get a building permit? Is it on budget and schedule, and if not, why not?'"

The Process-driven category, representing concern for the way the project is structured, is comprised of decisions associated with team approach, modularity, utilities/early site package, phasing, and construction mitigation.

This category allows for input from team members who are most focused on how the whole project is orchestrated. Communication, workflow, and "rules of the road" issues will receive the lion's share of their attention.

"The categories permit three different but important points of view about successful projects to be incorporated into the planning dynamics," Wilson notes.

Four Strategies

The other axis of the matrix deals with four dimensions of decision-making, or strategies, which Wilson describes as either quick and intuitive, long and drawn-out, political/consensus building, or entailing upper management involvement.

The quick and intuitive characterization applies to all 16 decisions, representing the first hurdle in decision-making as the project team takes a stab at an answer.

Many of the decisions, however, require more complex input, furnished through a long and drawn-out process that can include tours of other facilities, benchmarking, technical drawings, and similar time and money-consuming activities. Wilson defines the phases of this strategy as: first-hand look, detailed study, expert consultation, and preparation of a cost estimate.

"If each of those steps takes a month, you have four months right there," he says. "Some can take up to eight or 10 months to nail down. The core team members sitting at the table can't make this decision without additional information, which costs money and takes time."

The political/consensus level of decision-making occurs in the presence of multiple answers or choices. As an example, Wilson cites the questions of neighborhoods and office size. These issues require an astute understanding of the organization and how it makes decisions, suggesting that a member who can build consensus will make an important contribution to the project team.

"The organizational flywheel has to get together and determine which neighborhoods are located where or what office sizes are going to be, and that's entering into politics," he remarks.

The last type of decisions are those that go straight from the core group to upper management—questions like the building population, its look and feel, the lab culture to be fostered, and the inclusion of shell space. While the project architects can usually provide guidance based on their experience, there are no experts to consult on these issues. Rather, the answers are the province of high-level groups such as an institution's trustees.

Most Challenging Decisions

Figuring among the most complex and time-consuming of the 16 decisions are those related to special programs, flexibility, and code and chemical issues. Even with different drivers, each of these four must move through all levels of the decision-making strategy, either because they raise pioneering issues or due to the high stakes involved.

Special programs
Special programs incorporate some aspect of newness—in equipment, activity, or site—whose technical complexity must be subject to significant analysis and pass through multiple steps. Some examples are vivariums, nano labs, and cleanrooms. Key factors can range from vibration isolation, radio-frequency shielding, and electromagnetic interference to precise temperature and humidity control, air quality, and the potential for contamination.

While cleanrooms have existed for some time in industry, there aren't many such spaces in the institutional research environment, Wilson points out, and those that are coming on line have different needs.

"Research cleanrooms can tolerate certain conditions that industry can't, but they have much more unpredictability in respect to users, procedures, materials, and equipment," he says. "As a consequence, these spaces need a lot more flexibility."

Flexibility
Flexibility allows a facility to sustain change over generations of technology. Consisting of features like liberal floor-to-floor heights, generous accessible shafts, and good natural light, its primary challenge is cost. Not all owners can afford such robustness.

"Clients should answer the question of whether they want to renovate a building in thirty years, or if it is disposable," notes Wilson. "A renovate-able building will have extra space in the mechanical areas, corridors, and loading dock. This is similar to the interstitial question."

Flexibility can also involve the installation of redundant services, as in a research cleanroom.

"One can pipe only the Day-One tools, or one can put in additional piping to anticipate future tools," Wilson says. "This can be a $500,000 decision, and there are few guidelines to go by."

Code and Chemical Use
Questions of code and chemical use have become even thornier recently for several reasons. The new International Building Code, with its quirky mechanical regulations, has made it much more difficult for new research facilities to pass muster.

"You have to be granted an exception to do a good science building these days," he says, noting that one of the firm's projects, at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, stopped for six months because of this issue. While most states have started to recognize the glitch, it is still a 12- to 18-month effort to get a building through code approval.

Growing awareness of the presence of chemicals on the part of fire marshals compounds municipal oversight.

"The end result is that when drawings are submitted, you must have a complete chemical count and a chemical-handling strategy in order to get a building permit," Wilson observes. "We now have a team member, the chemical hygienist, who interviews users asking what chemicals they want to use."

The increasing tendency to restrict the use of solvents to just the first three floors of a building further complicates planning. For example, new restrictions on the use of certain chemicals below grade led to a design that modified the grade level of Harvard's Physical Science Research Lab.

The final complexity is the proliferation of agencies with jurisdiction over a single site.

"In the past, a building had maybe a dozen codes to conform to," Wilson points out. "Now there are over 100 different codes that need to be addressed, and multiple agencies to visit with. They all want full disclosure."

While code for urban and developed areas is apt to be universal, some issues remain local, so having someone who knows the lay of the land really helps. To make the code and chemical approval process easier, Wilson advises approaching the effort very carefully and doing a lot of homework.

"When you have a new code or a new official, or a new activity that needs code conformance, then you have to get help from people experienced in that area," he cautions. "You don't want to pay for someone to learn on your nickel."

by Nicole Zaro Stahl

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ISSN: 1096-4894