I reached out to a Turnbridge Rep and ask them has the project officially broken ground and they stated the project is still in design and development, so take that for what’s it worth, it’s still the late Fall, but winter is around the corner.
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Probably value engineering it down to be blander and less impactful than originally planned. Maybe all parking deck. 
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Wasn’t it already 50% parking deck?
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As an engineer, why do they call this process “Value engineering” and not “Value architecturing”? More often then not is architecture items they are cutting / changing. Not engineering items. No?
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As someone who’s had to go through this on projects for decades, it should be called design destruction.
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…that they’ll redesign the massive blank wall of parking deck??? LMAO.
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I prefer the term “value elimination” because rarely is value added by the process.
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There was a lot of back and forth on the parking deck screening a few months ago. Figuring out what design would be accepted, but within the budget. That screen is a big line item.
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I have an idea… how about they screen the parking deck… with more building… ya know, like actual useful building wrapped around the deck, like 400H. Or don’t be a f***ing cheapskate developer and pony up for the ventilation and screen it in the same glass/materials the rest of the actual building will be. Tired of the city allowing cheap barely-screened parking decks to continue plaguing downtown. Grow some balls and make some demands before issuing the permits.
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Sounds like this one’s battling to pencil out as-is, so the alternative is the low density we’ve got there right now, including a surface parking lot.
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Bing bing bing. I’m hopeful they keep the screening interesting, but I will take this density over a podium +4 wood floors any day.
Jake - I’m with you! Without divulging too much info, I’ll just say I have a monetary stake in parking deck screens being architecturally pleasing. If a deck is covered by glass, or the building I love it. High end screens that actually block site lines - love them. Perforated & corrugated VE level screens made of aluminum the thickness of a beer can? No thank you.
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The NC solution for screening decks: Kudzu
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It’s using a different definition of “engineering”.
the action of working skillfully/artfully to bring something about.
For example, “with some crafty engineering, we will have a similar screening to originally thought but at half the cost!”
The goal of value engineering is to not change anything but reduce the cost. This can be done by just changing manufacturers as one way to value engineer. That said, it almost always, always results in significant changes. Just all depends on how over budget the project is.
I know I’m going way off subject to your post here, but architects get paid as a percentage. It is in their best interest to design high to maximize or surpass the clients budget and then value engineer it down as little as they can get away with. They start by including all the wishlist item for the clients dream building/home/barn and then ask, “what can you live without” and go from there.
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It is a percentage based on the Owner’s budgeted cost for the project. If the project is over budget, you value engineer or make cuts to bring the project back within budget. That does not change the Architect’s fee. The Architect’s cost to do re-design work is eaten by the Architect.
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Why do architects ask to start high then? I know when they are designing a custom home, that’s what they do and in commercial it certainly seems that way as well.
Most projects get VE’d. Do architects just suck at hitting budgets in general? Surely every architect isn’t that bad. Especially when you do, let’s say a UNC clinic, then 6 months do another one almost exactly the same but it has to get VE’d because it’s overbudget. Surely they remember how much things cost 6 months ago, but yet they still can’t start at budget from the get go.
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says a tenant in the Creamery was given a 9 month extension. I think the previous lease end would have been end of this month so we’re looking at end of ‘23 before much activity here.
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BOOOOOOOOO! Unless they completely redesign the ugly ass parking deck pedestal then YAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Honestly no surprise. Nothing ever starts on time in Raleigh.
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Most owner’s will have a budgeted cost for the project. Many times the owner will keep adding things to the project but not change their budget and expect it all to fit within their budget. Architects seem to be afraid to tell the client that what they add will blow their budget. Otherwise, to tell them no.
Add on top of that site costs which are always variable and not fully known until you start construction. And, the variability of materials costs. That is why prototype buildings don’t work out as advertised. The same exact building will not cost the same from site to site to site.
Architects generally do pretty good with estimates for the building. But, when the site costs go way over, where do you think that money comes out of, the building.
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Architects for large projects generally do not do our own cost estimating – we are working with professional cost estimators as consultants. So if a cost estimator who does this for a living is so often off base, it gets you wondering why.
One thing I’ve learned in my (short) career is that a TON of fudging goes into cost estimating – it is an extremely imprecise process with a ton of unknowns. You can design a building that appears to be 100% on budget on paper, and the contractor’s initial estimate will always, always come in over that amount. The process is somewhat rigged this way if you’re working with a GMP contract model (guaranteed maximum price) in which contractors bid, pledge to build a project for a certain amount, and then proceed at risk. That means if they miscalculated the cost of something, or if the cost of some material increases, or they missed some crucial detail in the architect’s drawings that occurs 100+ times throughout the building, that’s money coming out of the contractor’s profits. It is in the contractor’s interest to say “this is over-budget” before they commit to a GMP, and to cut cost out to mitigate the considerable risk they are taking on. GMPs are so common now, and VE is such a given part of the process that architects often design with this in mind, intentionally slightly padding projects at an early stage.
For example, I have never worked on a project that didn’t have to cut cost in the façade, no matter how basic the design was. If I know the contractor is going to ask me to cut $200k regardless of what I design, I might start out with 10k sf more glass than I actually want in order to hold some cost in there. If I’d started with 10k less sf of glass, we’d still end up having to cut more. So: get in the ballpark of the budget, but overdesign a bit during the project’s earlier phases to end up with what you want in the end. All within reason, of course. The suggestion that architects do this because a higher construction cost equals more fee for us is not accurate – our fee is calculated based on budget, not estimated cost. And going over budget would ruin the goodwill between us and clients, from which many of us have repeat business. Additionally, going over budget often results in less fee for us, because we are often contractually obligated to redesign without extra fee if the budget overrun is our fault.
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