#363 - The Ramifications of Decisions - Archispeak

Episode Transcript
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Evan Troxel (00:08):
Okay, so theoretically.

Cormac Phalen (00:11):
So

Mm-hmm.

if we design something with a certain, with, with, uh, all of
our measurements laid out exactly how we

Mm-hmm.

so this is fi, let me preface this by, it's a
finished condition, like, so it'sfinished wall panels that go over a.
A substrate, a gib substrate.

That theoretically that happens.

that,

Yeah.

so theoretically the gib substrate is built and
everything is within conformanceand tolerance of, constructing a G
wall and constructing it to, a levelof levelness and flatness, right?
That you would assume that when they cameback to measure, said cladding over the

(01:02):
top of that, that they would measure itwith all of those parameters in mind that
the for certain, like, uh, reveal lines.
And you're very specific onthe size of the reveal lines
when the, the installed systemis not properly to those, those

(01:33):
desired, documented shop drawingapproved reveal spacings.
You wouldn't expect them tocome back and say, well, what's
the acceptable tolerance?
You would say, uh, quarterinch that I told you it

It is in the drawings?
Yeah,

Yeah.
And, uh, and, and so, my

after it's installed.
After it's installed.
Before it's installed, after measurement.
Like where was that question?
Theoretically asked in the process?

oh, after, after, in, theoretically after installed.

theoretically after installed is always the best
time to ask that question, right?

time

Because, because they then are in the position of putting it in
front of a theoretical client who atthat point it was, uh, fed up and wanting
to open their building, especially whenwe're at the finishes stages, and we'll
just bend over at that point and say,okay, we'll accept it because it's.

(02:33):
I mean, that's what happens, right?
And they know this and theytheoretically know this,

Well, so theoretically, um, let's just say that's not the case.
Let's just say they wantexactly what they were expecting

the design intent was.
Yeah.

what the design intent was and say theoretically that
they are very dissatisfied with theinstallation and theoretically, want to
make sure that it's, it's done right.
Yeah, it's uh, uh, I'm pretty surepeople are saying theoretically my

It's a hypothetical.
Yeah.

It's a hypothetical of course, but you know what, but it,
okay, so, so here is an interesting

never happens on projects, right?
This, this is the firsttime I've heard about this.

let's, yeah, I was gonna say, let's, let's like when, when you're
doing finished materials, like you're.
You're doing a panelized system.
And, and I had this on an older projectof mine, not theoretical 'cause it's
already constructed and already occupied.
Um, that

That one's real.
Yep.

they came back and they did, say, hey, we install it.
We did realize that, we aremissing this or that or anything.
What do you want us to do?
Do you want us to go back?
Do you want us to takeit out and reinstall it?
Or, do you feel likeit's within tolerance?
Now?
I've heard multiple people ask aboutwithin constructability tolerances for I,

(04:03):
I look at constructability tolerances as.
Everything below the skin of theactual, like talking about finished
materials like, casework or millworkor things like that, that are
intended to basically be measuredand built based off of the conditions
that they're going to be built in.
Right.

(04:24):
So you theoretically there we willgo back to the theoretical part.
You theoretically will actually have

Theoretically, actually, yes.

Yes, you'll actually have the substrate built before you come out
and measure it, and then if you see abust in built conditions versus what
is the design intent before you, it's

This comes up, it's supposed to come up at the OAC meeting.
Right.
And, and it, if it doesn'tand they just move forward.
And then there's, because I mean, thething that you're describing is Yeah.
The, the, the foundationhas to be built right.
And then the framinghas to be built right?
And then all of these things addup because the errors ripple.

Yeah.

And cause further errors for whoever's coming in later.
Right.
Which always, it always sucks tocome in later, but, but at that
point, you, I mean, that's why theysay like the last 10%, the last 2%,
whatever, the percentage, that'sthe, the, the most difficult to get.
Right.
Right.
I've built projects myself,and that is the hardest part.
The finish work is the hardest becauseyou have to deal with all of those

(05:36):
compounding, errors, unforced as theymay be all the way up to the end there.

well think about this.
So like when you're, they willsubmit their submittals for an entire
project within the first 10% of the

Mm-hmm.

uh, timeline or

Well, because of lead times and for good reasons.

of

Sure.

and things like

Yeah.

But if there is con, constructed conditions as you, like
everything is dependent on thoseconstructed conditions, would think that
they would say, all right, well, hey,know, we won't submit this until later.
Once they can verify allof the, infield conditions.
The, however, is, is that, ninetimes outta 10, they don't do that.

(06:22):
And so what the architect is forcedto do is essentially, litter the
entire thing with little caveats orverify and field or this or that.
And, that doesn't necessarily alwaysgo over well, especially if somebody's
like, pre, pre making everything priorto that actual final installation.

A good contractor wouldn't do it that way.
Right.
And, and, and I'm just, uh, unfortunatelylike that this is what gives.

theoretical?

This is what gives people no, like this is reality, right?
Like there are goodcontractors and there are

Right

con good contractors and, and you're talking about

now.

characteristics of contracting that lead to good
experiences versus bad experiences,which lead to all kinds of things
in, put in as notes, put in drawingsbecause it's CYA at that point, right?
Because you've had a badexperience in the past.

Yeah.
Actually that's funny that you'd saythat is because most of say additional
notes that are added on drawings or inspecifications are usually not from,
just your standard manufacturers.
It's like, oh yeah, make sure you putthis in here just to kind of cover.
It's like somewhere down the roadexperienced something bad they're

(07:40):
like, this will never happen again.

Yeah.

And they put in those notes.
General notes are usually like, theyain't gonna do this to me twice.

Well, that's what a whole con, I mean, we, we see this on the
Entree Architect community all the time.
What's in your contractregarding this situation that
you've never been in before?
And, and, and a lot of times your.
Making a conglomerate contract, evenif it's your first one from everybody
else's bad experiences and all theother litigations that have happened.
And contract documents are no different.

(08:10):
Like it's still part of the contract,it's just a different form of it, right?
It's a, it's a graphic drawn form.
And, and then you've got thespecifications and all of it is
designed based on the way capitalismand corporations and businesses work.
I mean, uh, we've, we'veseen the entire gamut.

that.
Y you and I have had thisconversation, in fact, just a, few
episodes ago when we were talkingthat know about spec writing, you

Mm-hmm.

the, the onus of making sure that, let's just say
you're doing some interior millwork and you are drawing say one
thing and your specs say another.
And it happens.
It happens

Yeah.

the time.
Um,

theoretically, hypothetically.

the, yeah.
How about hypothetically, theoretically,eh or whatever else you want
to do to kind of explain that.
Sometimes there is errors in

Mm-hmm.

something and

It's just normal part of professional services.
Yeah.

Well, it's just you hope that the, that you have
something in there that coversyou from that extreme condition.
So say for instance, you're lookingfor a specific tolerance, damn,
you better draw it that way.
'cause if not, if there's nothingelse in there for you to hang

You're leaving it up for interpretation.
Yeah.

you're gonna leave.
And then when you come out and you'relike, that's not what I wanted.

Show me what you Yeah.

well,

what you wanted.

me what you wanted.
Exactly, Show me where it is

Show me and, and I, and that's legit.
That's a totally legit response.
Yeah.

totally.
I, I was I happened to be showingsomebody a project of mine,
back when I was, uh, on my own.
And this was one of those, uh, youknow, mistakes of youth that I did
not coordinate the concealment of someplumbing, um, just in one specific area.

(10:18):
I, I did it almost every other conditionexcept for one little area that it was
just underneath the sill of a clear storyand there was a piping that came out.
Did a 90 and then came back and didanother 90, right in the corner.
And, and you know, I, I basicallyasked them, like it was too late

(10:40):
for them to conceal it, And so, I.
Basically I, in the field asked themto, tighten it up as best as possible
because the way it was originallywas even worse than it is now.
And there is not a single timeI enter that building that I
don't just stare right at that

It's rare that anybody else will ever care
about it as much as you will.
Right.
And, and I'm not, and I'm not talkingabout the owner or even the users.
I'm, I'm talking about the people whomade it happen, the, the builders.
Right.
And especially when it comes to like.
Man, electrical, likelocations of of things,

Yeah.

warts that are just freaking littered, all over a main entry wall.
Like right when you walk in the doorsand you look and you see a thermostat
and an alarm, and it's just kind ofthese random pock marks and it's like.
Uh, these are how you learn these lessonsof like, how do you draw things and why
do you draw things the certain way and,and how do you coordinate drawings and

(11:44):
who do you do that with and how do yougo through and make sure that that stuff
is all lined up the way that you want it?
Nobody, not your engineers.
Not your project manager, not yourconstruction administrator, like all,
they're never gonna care about it asmuch as you are because, and, and I hate
to say that, but like, even though youare all quote unquote on the same team,

(12:05):
like people have different priorities and

Oh yeah.
Yeah.

I mean, it's unfortunate that you have to walk
into this building and experience.
You're a little climbinggym in the corner of pipes.

Oh yeah.
It's, uh, it, it was something I wastalking to a client and they said
that they get a kick out of an i'm.
Yes, I am.

You're distracted.

yes.
I, I, no, I, I had, I had to write itdown because of, you know how he, like,
they walk around a building lookingattie and I kinda like looked at him.
I'm like, Tix and

What's that?

Did

What.

that.
It's you have a double-sided exitsign that you can see through
the glass and it says, Dixie.
And he, and they're like, justlike, you don't know how many times.
And, and so that was, and it just sohappened to be in a project that I'm,
that's currently under construction thatI, that I was just on a site visit for.

(13:12):
And we were walking around and theywere looking at, the exit signs that
we have scattered throughout thebuilding, especially the ones near, a.
A glass wall or glass door or

Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

just like, you know what?
Surprisingly we haven't found any Dixies.
And that's how it all started washe was like, and then he was just
like, yeah, we, we walk around thebuildings all the time looking fortes.
And I'm like, I, I have noidea what you're talking about.
then he are you writing it down?

Yes.

And, and that was it.
It was just, and he was just like,it's when you have a double-sided
exit sign that you didn't.
Consider

no, like opaque are, are they seeing the reflection in the glass
or it's the sign itself that doesn'tinclude like an opaque liner in between
the two sandwich pieces of, okay,

that's it.

so it's, it's,

So,

it's reading.
It's reading both ways at the same time.

It's exactly.

I mean, I mean the, the, the, it is, right.
It's like, it's, it's, it's funnybecause it's, the exit sign is for
the people inside the building, butit also, you can also see it from
outside the building through the glass.

Exactly.
Exactly.
And see these are like the littlethings that like, you know, we.
Sometimes just don't think about.
You're like, oh, wellyou have to have an exit

Mm-hmm.

You say, okay, well think about that

Right.

Think about what you know, what you need to do to that exit
sign from the 360, degree view here.
Like, it's not just about the personstaring at the door saying, that's the
exit, that's where I need to go out.
But it's also, it's like, oops,I forgot the little opaque panel
in the back and now it's a Dixie.

(14:48):
It was,

Oh, I love, I learned a new term today.
That was great.

it was like the best thing I'd ever heard.
I was just like, thank, thank you.
'cause like, now don't think that I'm,and it's one of these things, it's
like guarantee you that there's, therewas somebody somewhere, somebody now
has a general note in their drawings.

allowed.

That exactly that is, that is totally covering that

Mm-hmm.

Uh.

It's interesting to think about this in like the level of detail
that drawings have to get to to.
Explain all this stuff.
Like, and, and just this idea of the craftof what architects do and, and is that
going away or is that getting better?
Because on some level it's likethere's no end to the amount of detail

(15:40):
you could put in a set of drawings.
And at the same time, you only havea certain amount of time to do this.
Uh, so yeah, go for it.

Well, let me give you an example.
Well, so if you think about it, yeah,there's like, it, it's tons of it.
It's tons of information that yousort of have to track as well.
I.
the mistake of, of opening up my, uh,something while you and I are talking.

(16:10):
And so now you see, like the big old

I can see you're very bright all of a sudden

V.

and you're, I can't see your eyes any longer.

yeah.
So, all right, I am going to, there we go.
I had

Back to normal.

real quick.
So back to normal.
think about the struggles that we allgo through when you have a project.
information is so readily availableto put on a set of drawings and
because, you know, contractors kindof back to where we started this
conversation are really looking forif you are wanting the, if the degree.

(16:50):
Something, they want it on a drawing.
They want it in the documents so thatknow, they aren't being accused of
not doing it the way that you wanted.
When you know you, a lot of times we'redoing drawings with design intent, right?
so it's a kind of means of methodsthing or something like that.
And nine times outta 10, sure.

(17:10):
We don't really need all of the.
Specific information, but then when youdo that, that 10th time you're really
looking, I need that specific informationto be translated in the drawings.
'cause I need it built this way.
But, I, I, the reasonwhy, I just went, kind of,

(17:32):
All white for a second there in my, uh,'cause I, I quickly pulled up the number
of drawings that I had submitted forthe last project that, or the, of the
current projects that I'm working on.
And to that with the amount ofdrawings we submitted, that you would

(17:55):
be able to catch everything in there.
To make sure everything iscoordinated, even in the world of bim.

More drawings is harder to coordinate.
I will just put out like there, there's aninverse proportion rule work at work here.

Yeah.
So, so me, let me just foryou, like I guess, of how
many drawings I had in my set

I'm trying to go back in time 'cause I know you've mentioned
like kind of a running tally as, asyou've gone through this project and
I think the last time I heard it waslike 1200 or something like that.
Sheets.
Is that right?
I don't know.
At one time.
Maybe

the total submission, because I,

not architectural.
You're talking all, all inconsultants and everything?

my, to now remember, architects have to
review those two, all of the

Yeah.

to make sure that what they're doing, is jiving with what

Mm-hmm.

and vice versa.
Like, you know, if, if we aresaying we want a, a linear
diffuser in this location yet.

Your engineer showing a round one.
Yeah.

uh, they're showing a round

Yeah,

Round hole in a square, you know,

that's,

hole in a square

that's never happened.

whatever.
That's the saving 2,156 drawings,

21.

2,156

to brag about, right?
There

It is not something better.
Now understand this is the projectthat has multiple buildings
in it and all of that other

it is.
Like, yeah.
Yeah.
But still

but

that's a big project.
Yeah.

2,156 trucks

nightmare.
Coordination, nightmare.
Even with bim, even with digitalcollaboration cloud, this, that,
the other thing, everything,it, it's doesn't, it's no joke.

somebody will say, karmic is everything in this
draw, drawing, set, coordinated.
And if I ever say Yes,reach across the table and

You've gotta have some really, uh, good
response to that question.

there is no

you have to, oh, excuse me.
Let me, let me, uh,let me get back to you.
I need to talk to legal real quick.
Like what's, what's my acceptableanswer that I can say on the
stand here without saying yes.

Exactly how do, how do I, how do I say it is coordinated as,
as best as possible, but in a legal

It is within the, it's within the standard of care.

within the cons.
It's within the construction tolerance.

within the construction tolerance that the
contractor's building it right now.
Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, I'm curious if we go back to the beginning now, like what, what
do you do with this hypothetical situationwhere the tolerance after it's been built?
The question is, is this okay?
When it is clearly not.
For the client.

Well,

The client says it's not.
What do you do?

so hypothetically, you start working through solutions and coming
up with basically measure everythingthat you have try to determine there's a
way to salvage everything that is built.
That's already constructed andalready out on site and modify

Yeah.

overall docu, you

I mean, that's a nice teamwork thing to do, but I mean,
that creates a lot of more work, alot more work for the architect who
is not gonna get paid to do that work.

it does.
However, at the end of the day, I mean,

Clients gotta be happy, right?

client's gotta be happy, it's gotta be something that.
In this hypothetical situation, itreally is showing a, I think, an
actually really good example of betweenthe architect and the contractor.
I.
Nobody ever really wants to budge.
They're like, no, no, no, you gotta do itthe way I said, no, no, you, it's, it's

(21:49):
built this way, and that's all you get.
And then you're back andforth, back and forth.
This one is like, let's try to workout the best possible solution.
Oh, sorry.
Hypothetically

But there, there's definitely times where the answer is
like, no, rip it out and do it again.
And there are many contractors whowill just say, yep, you're right.
I mean.

Well,

There are, I mean, nobody wants that to happen, but
there are contractors who have theintegrity to say, we will do it again.

So I will give you a, a a another perfect example that, so I
did talk about the constructed projectthat had all of the, wall paneling,
wood wall paneling throughout theentire lobby space and everything else.
we had some mockups done, andthose mockups had a combination of.

(22:41):
Acoustic, you know, micro,perforated, acoustic ceiling panels.
because of the system that we were using,they couldn't do a natural wood laminate.
They had to do a, a typicalplastic laminate so we could get,
so what we ended up doing is wewent round and round with, a, uh.

(23:01):
Design, really a design build a designassist, contractor to help us with
how to match all of the woods fromplastic laminate to natural wood.
Because, there was, the desirewas, is that all of the wood
paling be natural wood, justknew that, the ceiling that was.

(23:23):
You, you, you would never reallyactually see them up close next to
each other, they wanted the appearancethat they were, you know, continuous.
And so we had a mockup done.
Ceilings were already in place.
I.
Ceilings came from Switzerland.
You can't, it's gonna be really hard tolike pull them down and send them back.

(23:45):
So we had the mockup of the wood,you know, that was side by side
with the already installed ceilings.
Couple rounds, we got ithit matched perfectly.
They ordered all the wood that, camefrom the same species and same kind
of like lot as the, the, uh, mockups.

(24:08):
So we were all, we were all good.

But accept.
Mm-hmm.

except, so then, they were like.
The panels are being installed.
this was on one of the off weeksbecause it was out of town.
And so we were traveling to go thereand I'll keep it clean, but we, we
went out there and, a friend of minein the office, she was with me and

(24:37):
she was rounding the corner before me.
This is a big building too.
This is, a hundred and some oddthousand square foot building.
And throughout the entire building,the multiple floors of this
building echoed the words, whatthe beep, as loud as you possibly

Wow.

from not a very, you

Just a little surprising then I guess

Y Yes.
Just a little surprising howoff it was and, and, and it
didn't come from me either.
It came

you, yeah.

was the one who

She was the canary.
The canary going down the mine shaft.

And so, you know, I, I round the corner and
I'm like, gotta be kidding me.
Like, we went round and round with this,and this is, you know, this is not right.
Come to find out, there was some,some health issues that kind of led
to supervision of those panels beingrun, getting, becoming wrong, and the.

(25:45):
Again, admirable, but the thecontractor said, we will make it right.
We will rip it all out.
We'll, make new ones and, reinstall them.
To the tune of him basicallytaking a bath to $1.7
million worth of wood paneling.
We said, no, we, we accepted it as

Oh,

we did, but

ouch.

we didn't.
The

The client did.

The client, accepted it.

So cormick, I just want you to remember, there's been times
when you have seriously criticized somearchitect's work on this show and, and
you know, crap like this happens, right?
And

but, but

had no control over this.

but remember when we were in, um, it was San Francisco.
And I don't know if you were with me,I don't think you were because you were

No, you went to the federal courthouse, right?

So I went to the Federal courthouse and Okay.
I remember who I was with.
I won't say their name 'causethey've got a show and I'm not

You're not gonna promote them, right?
Good.

I mean, I like 'em.
I'm

Good call.

but.
I had mentioned, I said to them becauseI saw something, and this is a architect,
this is a very famous star architect, andyou already said the name of the building.
So

People can Google it.

together.

can Google it.

can Google

Yeah.

out what, what building it is.
are some very questionable details.
There are some very on the way of bad.

Question bad.

but I said I, I turned to him and I said.
I don't know if I'm ever in a positionanymore to criticize somebody knowing
that that was probably a value engineering

Mm, mm-hmm.

that somebody said, yeah, I get what you're trying to go for.

Not on a Federal Architect project.
VE.

yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
So.

over budget.

I mean, yes, yes.
We're all going to look atand assess and criticize and
everything else, somebody's detail.
But we will also, if we're fair,probably say to ourselves, yeah,
I probably know what happened here

Yeah.

because I can almost guarantee you that the details
that I saw in that building.
We're most certainly value engineeredout because there's other things that
that detail trying to be on the buildingthat you see the detail and they're
like, man, that's close, but it's not.
For some reason somebody decidedto do something different, and

(28:31):
it most likely was is that,well, if you want this canopy.
Guess what?
You're gonna have to halfass it.
You're gonna have to get close.
And I think that's what happened.
So, yes, much as, and, and so again,it's one of those things that every time,
and now I haven't actually been in thatbuilding, since, but if I ever go back

(28:52):
into that building, it's the one I'mgonna have to like, walk through the lobby
space like this, like hands over my eyes.
Like I'm not looking, I'm not looking, I'm

Well, okay.
I, I have a legitimate question here.
I think I have a legitimate question,like how the, because this stuff happens.
Go ahead.
You have a before?

you asked

Yeah.

before you asked that legitimate question.
we did a show on this and they askedme, I took a photograph of that lobby
and sure enough, I went into Photoshopand I made those that that would match.

Generative fill.

Uh, I'm, I

I love ai.

out

I love ai.
Yeah.
It was before ai.
Yeah.
It was you, you had to do this manually.
You, you, you had to.

actually had to like, select all of that slightly darker, wood
tone sat there and then adjusted the, youknow, adjusted the hues and colors and

Look at you.
Look at you.
Yeah.
Okay.
My legitimate question is W whereis the construction administration
person in this kind of, becausethat's, this is decision making.
This is design.

Oh, yeah, yeah,

In the, in the moment when it needs to happen, where it probably
needs to happen the most, right?
Because it's, it's their, theirstuff is showing up on site.
People are putting it on thewall or whatever the case may be.
They are applying it to the panel system.
They're doing these things.
Where is the construction?
Is there no constructionadministrator on site?

(30:26):
Is this stuff happeningovernight when no one's looking?
Like, how does this stuff happenwithout, on these big projects, like
I, obviously this doesn't happenon every scale, every size type of
project this happened, but on bigprojects there are full-time ca people.
And they can't be everywhereall at the same time.

yeah, yeah.

you're talking about, you said like some huge number of wall
paneling in a, in a huge building.
Right.
And it seems like itshould be kind of obvious.
So, so are we going back to like, nobody'sgonna care as much as you do about this
and, and somebody just didn't like, oh,it didn't even cross my mind that that
might not be right kind of a thing?
Or, or what, what's going on here?

So,
so I asked this question yesterdaywhen, uh, and it was when we
were talking about the Pixies.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I had, I was in a room with the client and everybody
else, and we were just talking,and I saw something installed in
our building that, was a littlequestionable on why they did it.
it, it, it wasn't, it was furnishingsand they installed it and covered

(31:40):
something over and we were like, why?
And it.
It's a question that comes up on almostevery project that I've ever worked on
in my life where I've, been involvedwith construction administration,
where you have to ask, did theyat this and say, yeah, it's wrong,

(32:02):
but eh, whatever, you know, kind of

Just not caring, like not really fully, fully caring.
Yeah.

don't

Mm-hmm.

now.
In say the case of this particularone, there's locals, they're
local architects and, and that areworking on the project that may not.
I've worked on a couple of differentprojects where the local doesn't
really necessarily put the same levelof care on the specifics I would.

(32:36):
And again, though, making sure that,this goes back to the conversation
we were having about the, the, thedocuments is making sure that the
documents, if you start, gripingabout that, those little specific
things like, hey, the wood's gotta dothis, or Hey, this has gotta do that.
Or hey, this detail's gotta do that.
Making sure that yourdrawings back that up for you.

(32:58):
Making sure that when you do that, whenyou make that big stink about, Hey, I
want you to rip this out because it'swrong, you've got a leg to stand on.
And not everybody who could evensay this about contractors, not
everybody is as familiar with thecontract documents as you are.

I like how you go.
I giggled when you, it's like, oh,not everybody meaning hardly anybody.

Yeah, hardly anybody, especially when you look at some of
the tone and tenor of some of these,uh, RFIs that you get and you're
like, Hey, can you tell me, can youprovide more information on this?
You mean turn the pageand look at the details?

and, and granted, like nobody is as familiar with these
documents as you are because you've beenworking on them for years and they've
been looking at 'em for three hours.
Right.
So, but, but yeah, not, not actuallygoing through them before asking a
bunch of questions is kind of a, yeah.

I mean, you know, if you're gonna on it to build it, you

You should be.

what

I know you just let a AI look at it and say, what?
How much should I charge?
Yeah.

Let AI, let the change order AI run a little bit

Yeah.

like.
What did they forget andhow much more can I charge?

That this whole idea though, of, of ca and the purpose of
ca is, is to, get in front of theseproblems and know what's coming up in
the installation, in the sequencingand, and get in front of these issues.
And you have mockups.
And you have submittals.
Because my, my next, and Iwant, I want you to do this.
I have a question though about kindof maybe, what, what the potential

(34:35):
downfall is here because of like.
The way that our drawings havebeen delivered forever, which
is like black and white, right?

Right, right.

Black and white drawings.

Well, you know, it's actually funny is just had another
conversation on another project,uh, and not the hypothetical one.
And not the one that we were talkingabout that's already constructed.
But the, uh, twenty onehundred and fifty six, sheet

Mm-hmm.

that, there is caveats in that, like some of the deliverables
are models, analysis models and thingslike that, and they're like, you
know, well we've been generating alot of these, RFIs off of your model.
And the, the, they werelike, no, no, no, no, no, no,

Right,

The model is for informational purposes
only, and it is not,

the contract documents,

of, it's, it is not, it's not even built.
When we are drawing it, we are notdrawing it to a level three 50 or 400.
We're, we're typically doing it toa level 300 drawing that does not
include all of the, know, connectiondetails and all of this other stuff.
It is not a shop level, know,shop drawing level model.

(35:49):
It is just a design intent model.
Right.
And, and so, they're like, well,you're missing this information or that
information, and nowhere in our contractis that deliverable to be that way.

Hmm.

And so.
You and I had a conversation ages ago withshop architects when they were talking
about the deliverable for the Centerand how it was a model based delivery.
I can only imagine, and I don't even thinkthat we actually got into it as part of
the conversation with them, what the levelof detail that that model actually had to

(36:24):
be versus the level of detail the modelstypically are when you do a 2D delivery.

And it, and, and it's not delivered in the same
package that we, that you use.

Right,

It was, it was done in digital project probably right
at like Frank Gary's, you know.
Gary Technologies digital project,which is based on Katia, which
is used to design aircraft, like,and so completely different.
But, but again, you, you haveto know all that upfront, right?
Like, and you agree to do thatin upfront where everybody has

(36:57):
had those conversations and theyhave those expectations and they
are actually in the contract.

Exactly.
So, and if you think about it back toour original, like to to the start of
this conversation, the expectation,as you said in the contracts are
gonna be that everybody's gonna be.
Designing to that nth

Mm-hmm.

that like, you will be doing and maybe it's not that,
necessarily the structural engineeris going to be doing the connection
details 'cause they typically don't.
It's typically the steel contractor,but then that's when you have the
steel contractor on, on the project ata certain level where, again, they're
starting to develop drawings before theconstruction documents are even done.

(37:43):
You know, I mean there

Design build that, that, that happens.
Like you get those, you get thosesubs involved at the table when you're
figuring this stuff out and yeah.

I mean the, the hypo hypothetical project that I'm talking
about, we had, design assist for amultitude of different things because
of the complexity of the project,because of certain actual tolerances
that we did need to meet, like, over,I mean, the calculations that we had
to do for our facades to not exceeda certain weight because it was.

(38:16):
know, cladding an existingbuilding and that existing building
could, bear just so much weight.
And so the parts and pieces thatwe put into the facade had to,
either meet or be less than thelimits of, of the existing building.

(38:36):
And, and so, we had to go throughthe whole process of essentially
doing a design build, youknow, during the construction

To know.
Yeah.
To know if it would work.
Yeah.

is just like, okay, here's all of the parts and pieces.
Run the calculations.
Yes, you are going to be under, the totalweight load that this building can bear.
It was, it was actually a pretty.
For me, it was pretty educational tokind of like, never really thought about,
doing the calculations of, of like,the, the loading of, know, certain,

(39:11):
certain decisions in facade material.

is a super, super cool process.
I think I, and, and technology couldreally enable you if you actually have
the experience of, you know, the wisdom ofsomebody in that trade sitting there with
you, or even one of their technicians,or everybody you've got kind of this.
BIM room, big room, kind of a, a scenariowhere you are solving these problems

(39:35):
together and it's like, well, whatif we change the gauge of the metal?
Well, okay, if we do that, we need toadd these structural ribs every so often.
Okay, so what's the weighttrade off if we go this way
versus that way kind of a thing.
And those are amazing educationalexperiences to go through and
super challenging and super fun.
I think that that's like thebest part of architecture.

I don't, you, you brought it up, so I'm gonna go off
on this tangent for just a second.
Even just the choice of materials,of like, there was a certain
portion of this building that wewanted, an insulated metal panel.
was, just so few insulated metal panelsthat could be there because it was a

(40:20):
two hour rated insulated metal panel.
But we also wanted it to havean architectural, know, from
their architectural line.
And there are otherpeople who can do that.
I.
But there are ramifications if you go to,so like our base of design was, was X,
we used X, we designed everything to X.
Well come to find out that thecontractor said that if we change to

(40:44):
the Y panel, can, offer this savings.
One thing that they didn'tfactor in is that Y Panel doesn't
have the same span capacity

Mm, mm-hmm.

So now the Y panel now has to have that, the supporting
structure that goes into it.
And so

No more savings.

you're like, more savings

put more structure behind it.
You're not saving anything.

exactly.
You're, you're adding structure to it.
You're adding like coal form framing

Mm-hmm.

you know, to, to pick up those spans.
you know, you then you're justlike, okay, well, we've committed to
doing the Y panel now, but now youknow, the owner's looking at, it's
like, well, where was that savings?

Yeah.
There's so many times where it'slike in the moment, this sounds
great and this, this situationhappens all the time in the mo.
Well, yeah,

Oh yeah.

why wouldn't we do this?
Because nobody's takenthe time to actually.
Follow that path all the way throughthe project and see what the true cost
is, because this changes this, whichchanges this, which changes that.
Oh, we didn't think about that.

Mm-hmm.
Well, that's where, when you weretalking about the architect in the
construction administration process,that's when they come into play.
Like.

Yep.
Because of their experience.
Yep.

the, I'll say the one thing that I do actually have
a, a, good, ability of doing iskind of seeing the ramifications of
decisions and it, and it's not nec,it's, it's based off of experience.
You know, it's like, I've gotenough experience to know that I.
I've looked at, during my initialdesign assessments, I was looking at
both Panel X and panel Y, the reasonI chose Panel X was because of its

(42:23):
span capabilities versus uh, panel Y.
Because panel Y, yeah, I could,I might actually like Panel
Y's, overall appearance more.
I've just added so much additional likecost because of, of structure that any
offset in, panel to panel is completelyout the window when I've got this,

(42:44):
now I have more introduced structure.
so when they have this conversationI'm like, yeah, well, but you know,
in the, they're like, well, didyou look at this, uh, this panel?
Look how much savings we can get.
Like panel to panel.
Yes.
how do, how do you make that panel work?
And they're like, what do you mean?
And then you start asking thatquestion, and then they have to go back
and, know, start running the numbersand say, oh, oh, that's what you

And one difficult thing.
This rarely happens if it, I don't evenknow if it happens ever is okay, talk.
Think about your twenty onehundred and fifty six sheet set
that I wrote down the numbers soI could come back to it right now.
Whose name is attachedto all those decisions?
That make up that 2,156 sheetset like that doesn't happen.

(43:33):
And that's a problem because when itcomes time to talk about the option of
swapping out Panel X for Y, the person whofigured that out in the very beginning.
Is probably not part of that conversationbecause nobody knows who it is and does
that person even work here anymore?
Right?
Like, I mean, that's, that's a reality.

(43:56):
And, and let's just say they do, theystill, nobody still knows who it's
like it's, it would be rare to addressand find that person to actually.
Become part of that conversationso that they can bring it up in
a moment and say, you know what?
Like, uh, this was already all figuredout and, and, and we, we, we have
to stick with this because of that.

Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
'cause nobody ever second guessesanything during construction.

But there's no, there's no mechanism in place to even do
what I just talked about, right?
Like you would think maybe with BIMthere is a way to do this, but at
the same time, what a mess, right?
It would be a disaster.
And I.
Things get changed along theway and somebody else makes a
decision that override somebodywho was there first and, and these

(44:44):
things happen like it's a miracle.
Like we talk about this onthe podcast before, right?
It's a miracle that thisbuilding even gets built.
With all of that stuff thatjust is kind of organic.
It's like, it's like watchingthe Amazon Rain rainforest grow.
It's like, how, and oh my God, atthe same time, uh, because it is
such this weird organic process ofhow buildings actually go together,

(45:09):
the decisions that have to happen.
The cumulative decisions that haveto ha, is that the right word?
No cumulative decisions thathave to happen and overrides
and changes, of course.
And, oops, erase that.
Go back, try it again.
There's so many things along theway and it's just like, whoa.
And, and, and so whenthese, when these new.

(45:31):
Issues pop up later on down the road.
You can be, you can never reallyincorporate the original decision makers
back into that process and save some timeand really understand the, the true, like,
here's the question you should be asking.
Instead of in the obvi in themoment, it's obvious, of course
we should swap these panels out.
This one costs half as much.
Turns out, turns outthat's not quite the issue.

(45:52):
The, the, the whole deal right there.

Right.
And by the way, they, they went with why?
Because of the perceived,

they put in, so they put in more structure.

the the, so, exactly.
And the funny thing is, is so withthat, like you then have to chase
back and figure out whether ornot the existing structure that

It could even support it.
Right,

could, could even support the

but you do it.
And that that, this is another crazything is like, and we do this, you would,
you would say, Hulu would ever do that.
And it's like it happens all the time.
Like this actually happens all the time.

of the, will say that what was crazy is like all of the
different decisions, so this was.
This was a me.
These were metal panels that wereadded to a structural system that we
added to the existing building thatwe were cantilevering off of it.
That had to meet a veryspecific vibration criteria

I know which project you're talking about.
Yeah.

Yeah, I know.
You know?
Yeah.

and I don't think you hung a lightweight facade on that building.
I'll just throw that out there.
I'm pretty sure you didn't.

enough.
Surprisingly enough.
It's a lot morelightweight than you think.

Well, may, yeah.

But

it's, it's lighter than concrete.
Right.
Okay.

it is lighter than concrete.
It is, it's actually a lot lighterthan a lot of things, really.
However, the thing about it is, is thatit like that do to modify it, like you go
through all of these like very specificcriteria for, you know, and I'm gonna

(47:33):
bore some people, but you know, like.
Buildings, have a naturalresonance to them.
Right.
And in certain, certain building types,like say, research lab facilities, have
to, we have to reduce that to almost zero.
Right.

(47:53):
know, you, you've, you've done

Mm-hmm.

like, you know, so you have to

The scientific equipment, the measuring devices cannot have
a vibration introduced into themor else they just, they can't,
they people can't do their job.

com you complete, like you're completely ruining their research.
It's gotta be almost like astatic zero kind of thing.
And, and so anything that you doto change that building, like, pick
panel, Y over X, are changing thedynamics that you've already tested.

(48:26):
And so now you're like, okay,now I've added all of this to
it, and what does that now mean?
And it's just like, well, nowwe're gonna have to do this.
To counterbalance what you just didhere, or now we're gonna have to do
that, or you can't do this type ofresearch in this particular area of
this building because you know youhave got X, Y, or Z going on there

And, and, and people who come in at the end and say, Hey,
what if we, I've got a brilliantidea that's gonna save you half a
million dollars, and they can't thinkthrough all those things because they
don't even know about those things,

exactly.

but they've got this brilliant idea that everybody has to
listen to right now so that they canbe a hero, or they are, or they're
legitimately trying to do the right thing.
Right?

and I mean,

Yeah.

most of the time it's not outta malice.
It's like, you

Mm-hmm.

they're hearing the co the contractor, I mean, sorry, the, the owner
say, I've only got X amount to build this.
And you know,
Oh, inflation or, tariffsor whatever are gonna, like
escalate the, the cost of things.
And if we don't purchase this now,it's gonna be, more expensive.
And so, you mean, oh, mybuilding's gonna go up in cost.

(49:34):
I thought you said it was gonnacost X amount and now you're
saying it's X plus whatever.
And, and so then they're like, well,we definitely need to save that money.
And so then they make, a kneejerk reaction to it then realize
that they're not nec, they're not.
Saving money, but they're actuallyadding more money to it based off of
kind of the carrot that was dangled infront of them that said, Hey, you could

(49:57):
potentially save this amount of money ifyou switch from this panel to this panel.
And you're like, and then that's whenyou know the architect raises their
hands and says, yes, but you know,it's like, yes, the panel itself
costs that much, but here's whatyou, here's what the trade off is.

(50:17):
And by the way, not onlythat, but you have to do this
and this and this and this.
Where's your savings now?

I've been through that process so many times, and most of
the time we still have to do allthe work just to To do the cha.
Yeah,

yeah.

most of the time.
Even when you say, and you have tothink about this and you have to
think about this, and there's thisand there's this, and people will
be like, yep, I need it by tomorrow.

Exactly.
It's just like, well, okay, Evan, weknow we, and we, can you get that to

Right.

Yeah.

You'll be, you'll be working tonight and this weekend.
Yes.

well, the hypothetical, the hypothetical that I, uh, you
know, was giving you earlier today,to get out by close of business,

Oh, you got some work to do.
You better, you better get to work.

know, 1159 in 59 seconds in my world.

All right, well, let's, uh, let's get off this call.
I hope people got somethingout of this and at least, uh,
could commiserate with you.
Uh, I know I could.
So

Yeah,

thanks for sharing.

we've been there,

We have been there and you will continue to be there, it sounds like.

Yes.
But I will be, uh,

sorry, man.
All right.
I'll talk to you soon.

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