Why you should be talking to a builder early in the process

Peter Daffen on Nestor Group. Deep in thought, just how he likes it.

Sure, I’m pretty biased (five years of uni, seven years in practice, lots and lots of architect friends, will do that!) – but I think the ability to listen carefully, work through lots of different design options, balance costs, time pressures, planning requirements and gravity (yes, we want our buildings to stand up!) is a pretty good skill set.  But hey, we’re just one part of the building and design team. Engineers, planners, building surveyors and, above all, builders all play a crucial role in getting a building from idea to completion. And the more these different disciplines collaborate and share ideas, the better for your project. Each of these consultants get their time to shine, but I find in the typical process of design and documenting a building a builder gets sidelined until the very last minute.

More than swing a hammer

The builders that I work with all have experience and expertise that mean not only can they swing a hammer, they can provide great insight into buildability, budget and construction timeframes well before they get to site. This means that the project benefits from input while there’s still time to incorporate it into the project. 

Generally I’ll try and get them along to our second or third session. By this stage I’ll have a pretty good idea of what you want out of your project and some initial ideas on how to resolve it – but nothing is locked in yet.  The builder will come along to the meeting, look over the plans with us, share their thoughts, have a good look around the project to highlight any red flags and then allow to cost it up at the end of the design process.

I recently brought Pete from Nestor group along to a project meeting in Mt hawthorn. I had already had a session with the client where we identified their priorities for the project, had a discussion about the budget, looked at best practice passive solar design for their project and had sketched three or four ways at resolving the project. When Pete came along he was able to answer the clients questions about staging the project so that it would have minimal impact on their home life, how to knock down a particularly tricky looking wall, and chimed in on answers about some innovative construction methodologies like hempcrete. In more typical arrangements all of this would be left to the end of the project. But his early feedback meant we could incorporate it into the final design option.

A couple of weeks later he and I sat around the table with plans and pens in hand to get into the nitty gritty of the project (the sort of thing that is important to clients, but you don’t really want to sit around talking about for an hour or so). We got deep in to the geometry of the roof angle, the pros and cons of different cladding options and how to stage the project so that it would meet the budget.

A hidden benefit

The whole process also had the benefit of putting the project at the forefront of his mind and started to pencil it into his pipeline to make sure that he was available for the project. This is something to keep in mind, as a lot of builders I’m speaking with are already booking out the first half of 2023.