The schematic and contract phases are the stepping stones of almost any project, retail or otherwise. These are valuable phases as they establish the architectural intent, visual style, and suggest one structural approach or another. As important as these stages are, in practice it is becoming increasingly apparent that the design development phase is far more challenging than the other two. When the goal is to produce retail/other construction drawing sets, clients note how the challenges translate into time and monetary costs.
The explanation for this comes from understanding how most architectural firms, particularly traditional ones, operate. In short, companies often spend very little time during the schematic phase for many valid reasons. For example, in many cases, the design phase of a project is not formally contracted at all, when the architecture office is presenting to a potential client or entering a competition. Other times, the client’s budget is not fully determined and many design considerations are not established, so the contract phase involves a lot of guesswork and skims the various aspects of the design. This is natural and problems arise only once the client is clear about the project and decides to go directly to design development without double checking the project premises.
In practice, the link between the schematic/contract phase and design development is highlighted by a rather shocking statistic: most construction projects around the world incur cost overruns (there are plenty of resources online, here’s one which is quite reliable: [Source: kpmg.com]. The reasons projects end up costing more money and/or time is precisely the gap between the expectations set by the contracting phase and the challenges of producing valid, ready-to-implement sets of retail construction drawings. Here, choosing Retail BIM Modeling as a development approach is a fundamental way to significantly reduce design development times. But this is not a clear approach, nor is it the only one that project managers should implement.
BIM, or Building Information Modeling, has changed the landscape of project management, allowing smaller teams of architects and engineers to work on larger projects while having a clearer overview of the development process. However, retail BIM modeling can be cost prohibitive when approaching many local design firms. Fortunately, outsourcing design development to a company abroad can significantly reduce costs, as the client can choose an industry leader from a broader group of companies with much lower operating costs.
Combining BIM with outsourcing the production of construction drawing sets to retailers means you can spend more time making sure the drawings you get allow you to realize your design intent.
While many statistics covering cost overruns focus on large-scale, state-funded projects, retail is also a notorious target of this phenomenon. This is because retail designs are often strongly branded and end up rolling out to many locations in the geographic area of the target market. Mistakes made in the schematic phase can have dire consequences when they go through the rigors of retail BIM modeling. Fortunately, BIM makes it very easy and affordable to adapt a base project/template to many contexts, since design elements are only built once.
It’s clear then that with retail in particular, it’s always best to partner with an experienced developer. Outsourcing is not only more profitable, but also opens up the possibility of collaborating with very experienced specialists. Also, when time budgets are stretched, it pays to rely on a larger company that can scale up the workforce to meet deadlines. Communication and collaboration tools have reached a level where working with a foreign partner is not a problem but an opportunity.
In conclusion, design development is a very complex phase and will always carry a number of risks. The best way to minimize these is to look for Retail BIM Modeling partners with significant experience in Retail Construction Drawing Sets, and ideally involve them in all stages of development. A large outsourcing company will typically handle all aspects of development in-house, including MEP, and will spot and manage any systemic issues with the project early on. In this way, offshore design firms are well positioned to ensure that your project does not end up in the aforementioned statistic and will help your company stay ahead of the competition, on time and on budget.