Guides & How-To Articles
The questions that matter most on a project are rarely about the building: who to hire, what a bid means, what to have ready, what to do when the schedule slips. These articles answer them the way the owner answers them on site.
Fourth-quarter planning: getting next year's build ready to start
Every December we get the same call from an owner whose board just approved a project for the coming year, and the question is always whether it can break grou…
Read the article →Planning a Texas construction schedule around winter freeze delays
The forecast said a low of twenty-six for two nights, and the pour scheduled for that Thursday moved to the following Monday. Nobody on the site was surprised…
Read the article →Five ways to pull a construction finish date forward
A hotel owner once told us the soft opening had moved up six weeks because the brand's marketing calendar had moved. The drawings had not changed. The building…
Read the article →Getting your business ready before construction starts
The day the dumpster arrives is a bad day to find out the point-of-sale system runs through a closet on the demolition plan. We have watched it happen. The bui…
Read the article →Six early warnings that a construction schedule is slipping
A missed opening date is never the first sign of a schedule problem. It is the last one. By the time the date moves on paper, the job has usually been drifting…
Read the article →How a tight labor market moves your construction schedule
The electrician who told us he could start on the fourth called on the second to say the seventh, and the seventh became the fourteenth. Nothing was wrong with…
Read the article →Parking garage construction: what decides how long it lasts
Stand on the top deck of a ten-year-old parking garage and look at the joints. If they are sealed and dry, the structure was built and maintained correctly. If…
Read the article →Bank branch build-outs: vault, drive-up and the brand package
The vault door arrives on a flatbed and weighs more than the rest of the branch's millwork combined. Where it lands, and whether the floor under it was designe…
Read the article →Building a veterinary clinic: drains, noise, imaging and finishes
The hose bib in the kennel run tells you everything about a veterinary clinic. Somebody is going to wash that floor down every day, with a chemical strong enou…
Read the article →Building a childcare center that passes licensing the first time
A childcare center has two opening dates, and only one of them is on our schedule. The first is the day construction finishes. The second is the day the state…
Read the article →Self-storage construction: site, unit mix and the first rental day
On a self-storage site the customer never sees most of what we build. They see a gate that opens, a driveway wide enough for a rented box truck, a door that ro…
Read the article →Building a church: sanctuary, classrooms and the first service
A building committee walked us through their existing sanctuary on a Tuesday afternoon, and the first thing the pastor described was what the room felt like on…
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