 PART ONE - BACKGROUND My thoughts are directed toward the issues of working with Structural, Civil, and Mechanical-Electrical [M/E] consultants. Other specialties like food service, acoustics, lighting, graphics, landscape have a much more limited scope and finding a firm with a good reputation or who has worked with firms you respect is usually good enough. BTW that concept might be considered a starting point in your search for any consultant. ’Who works for the firms you admire?’ The nature of the beast for M/E firms is that they need 3 times the number of projects as you do to be the same size as you. M/Es that do process engineering, water treatment etc will need a specialized building design department or they may never ’get’ what the project requires. You want someone who does lots of this kind of work so you don't discover they have a blind spot right where you need expertise. Structural and civil firms may have other types of clients so the issue isn't the same. Structural consultants have rarely been an issue. Maybe we have been lucky. The exception is if they are much larger than you. Then there is a tendency to speed ahead of you, which makes for a lot of changes for someone. They will resist being the ones who change because ’we did what you asked us to do’. The problem is that they aren't used to stop-and-start and client whims, because their work is inherently much more straightforward. Civil is similar to structural with the difference that a structural engineer is used to working with some small scale fussy stuff. Small scale to a civil engineer is anything less than a football field in size. You might think about how a curb should terminate; they never will. If this stuff is important to you, you may have to give them the notes or details you want to see on their drawings. Just saying, that’s the tendency. I think the right ratios are 3:1 for the M/E size to your size; and 1:1 for the Civil or Structural size to your size. These are just guidelines and many other things are more important than size. The next post will touch on those issues. You can find the other Parts of this series here:
Part 2 - Hiring http://www.architekwiki.com/1/post/2013/05/guidelines-for-working-with-consultants-hiring.html Part 3 - Working http://www.architekwiki.com/1/post/2013/05/guidelines-for-working-with-consultants-working.html
Rick Wolnitzek
5/7/2014 12:14:29 am
Thanks, best projects 12/29/2015 09:36:49 pm
As a Landscape Architect I found this post particularly interesting. I have worked for mid-size multi-discipline firms and am now have my own LA studio. I have many architect colleagues who find their relationship with civil engineers difficult. Have you considered using the the LA to lead the site design? In my experience civils and architects come from very different schools of thought and landscape architects land somewhere in between. We are often hired as a sub-consultant to the architect or civil but our most successful projects have been when we had the civil sub to us or were charged to lead the site design.
Rick Wolnitzek
12/30/2015 08:06:38 am
Randy, that's a good idea. I think it would work better. I have never tried that because my early experience (1970s) was doing all site planning myself. 12/30/2015 09:29:28 pm
Rick - I have always thought that any architect worth their salt looked at the site and building design in a holistic manner - whether designing the site themselves or collaborating with a landscape architect. Unfortunately many of the architects I have worked with treat the site as an after thought and turn the site design over to the civil engineer - missing opportunities to bring the entire project together in a well designed composition.
Rick Wolnitzek
12/31/2015 11:56:57 am
Randy, Comments are closed.
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