>The fact that design professionals do not readily
>accept this role is one reason that there has been a rise in the number of
>contract managers.
  ^^^^^^^^^
>
>][<en

Do you mean here "construction" managers?  The decline of the role of the
architect or design professional as the recognized "choreographer" of the
building project has many, many causes.  You have hit on one of them here.

Also at work was I believe a failure by the profession to recognize
changing circumstances...a failure to adapt.  We have been lamenting in
this thread the failure of the principle parties in a construction project
to form mutually dependent teams: working toward the common goal of a
successful result with profit for all, and the carnage that results when a
CYA attitude on everyone's part takes hold.  But I do believe that in some
cases that the design professional missed the boat in joining the team,
holding to a medieval view of the purity of the design, budgets and client
desires be damned.  As a result, the architect has been cut out of the
building process (the rise of design/build) and coordination process
(unwillingness to compromise) by owners, hence the retention by owners of
construction managers.  Extremely complex jobs also see construction
managers utilized to bring focused skills to scheduling and coordination.

While my training is in architectural design, I'm really not a very good
designer...my skills are in the area of critiquing a design, preparation of
construction documents (tight specs that describe what it is that is
specifically being built, not copying every section of the master spec to
CYA), and I'm murder in document coordination (a skill that is somewhat
less valued today with the advent of CADD automation) and construction
oversight.  The tension among the parties involved in the building process
never made much sense to me; of course, I hold to the silly idea that I'm
here to help.

When I was in Memphis, I was part of the design team for the restoration of
the Orpheum Theater.  The firm I was with had schematic and design
development, another firm that we partnered with did the construction
document, and state law required multiple primes, so we had a construction
management firm involved as well for the
estimating/bidding/contract/building phases.  I got loaned to the
construction document firm for the period while the documents were prepared
to help with that, and to help see to it that the design vision got
realized in the final documents.  After that, we were pretty much out of
the deal...the project was then handed off to the construction manager for
building.

Nonetheless, I would frequently during the lunch hour walk down the
stifling monotony of America's longest pedestrian mall (Mid-America Mall,
once known as Main Street, that's another story of injury to an urban
environment), stop at the Planter's Peanut Shop (still had Mr. Peanut in
the window mechanically clanking around roasting the nuts) and grab a bag,
and stroll on down to the Orpheum and keep up with progress.  One of the
aspects of the design was capturing two adjacent retail spaces and
converting them to additional lobby space, adding a bar and handicap
restrooms.  It required a roughly 4" concrete pour over the existing floor
to level the subfloor and provide the base for the terrazzo finish floor.

As you can imagine, there were a lot of penetrations required for plumbing
and HVAC chases.  Plumbing and HVAC contractors would buy holes from the
general construction contractor, the timing of which was scheduled by the
construction manager.  So I'm wandering around at lunch eying the joint the
day of the afternoon concrete pour, all the formwork and rebar and bones in
place, admiring our handiwork rising from the dust of demolition, and
realize that the enormous hole for the HVAC riser is not where it's
supposed to be.  So I call over the GCC supervisor and suggest that he may
want to reconsider this pour.  He says, but that's where the HVAC dude told
me to put the hole.  And I say, but that's not where the hole needs to be,
unless you want to have the HVAC ducts out in the room.

It was his responsibility to verify everything, but he didn't have anybody
to verify anything with, because the designer of record wasn't involved
anymore.  And it was a complicated design in that space, and easy to see
why he might not recognize that when all was said and done and it was time
to build the walls, that that hole was gonna be a mess to move.  And the
cost of moving it wouldn't have been peanuts.

He bought an enormous bag of cashews, my favorite, and we shared them
overlooking the bluffs of the Mississippi River, and bonded.  We always
looked forward to working together on future projects, and we built some
mighty fine stuff together there in Memphis.

____________________________________________
Dan Becker
Executive Director, Raleigh Historic Districts Commission

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