Changes during the lifetime of a design and construction project are inevitable. Your team needs to be prepared and quick to react to keep your project on track and get you the right result.
By Jeff Eriks and Evan Williams
Change is a constant in all facets of life, and the design and construction of your new solid waste facility is not immune. It is not unusual to walk through a recently completed project and be greeted with a number of 鈥淚 wish we did this differently鈥� moments.
We believe the best change management strategy is to be as detailed as possible in the initial stages. This involves gathering all the stakeholders to present and discuss the project and potential improvements to ensure all partners understand the scope of work for the project and how the facility is intended to function to minimize assumptions or confusion. Ranging from minor inconveniences to serious risks to the operation, the need to change plans during a construction project is not unusual, but how you handle that process and the speed with which you make critical decisions can dramatically reduce the risks to project budget as well as schedule.
However, it is also important that you make changes when it is the right decision for the company/operation long term and your project team should not penalize you for that. They need to be prepared to respond quickly to your requests, so you are not in fear of making the change and the project momentum keeps going in the right direction. If your team is not doing this for you, they are doing you a disservice.
The change management strategies for this article will be grouped in phases of the project: Pre-Construction and Construction, and will provide some high-level examples.
Change Minimization
The best way to avoid changes is to avoid mistakes in the first place. There are several strategies that teams can implement to help ensure minimal changes to the project as it moves forward.
A good starting point is effective meetings and information management. The project manager should strongly consider keeping and circulating accurate and complete meeting minutes after project meetings to the stakeholders to keep everyone on the same page and allow project team members that cannot attend every meeting to stay involved. Ideally, they will also use a project management program to house not only the meeting minutes, but also all of the project documents so project members can easily access and review project documents.
Implementing Building Information Modeling (BIM) and, at a minimum, a 3D modeling program into your project is critical for projects with a high-degree of coordination between the architect, equipment providers, and design subconsultants. This is especially true for recycling centers, but it can apply to any construction project. Aside from using the 3D program to confirm clearances, minimize clashes, and coordinate vendors, the program can be an effective tool to convey content of the design to project partners that are not as familiar with reading 2D technical plan sets. The client may want to include in RFPs a requirement that all designs be available and presented in a 3D format, so it limits the chance of re-working designs later. An added benefit to initially designing in 3D is that local jurisdictions are increasingly requiring building renderings for planning permissions, so this can be incorporated into that effort.
When incorporating an existing building into your planning, strongly consider 3D scans of the entire building and all its mechanical systems. The systems that incorporate this information into the technical plans for the improvements have been improving rapidly, and this is an invaluable tool for design development to improve both the speed and accuracy of existing conditions adoption. Do not assume everything in the scan is 100 percent accurate; there are still critical items and dimensions that you should verify in person.
When assembling your internal and external teams, make sure to incorporate those with industry specific design and construction experience. There are many particulars to building and site developments for solid waste and recycling operators and construction is too expensive and time consuming to need to redo anything due to a lack of familiarity with the industry. Also, if you miss key elements during the design phase like column protection, key overhead clearances, foundation system or slab designs, it is a costly mistake to deal with after you start operating.
Change Management鈥擯re-Construction
During the initial phases of the project the owner and project development teams will define the programmatic parameters and work through initial project planning. At this point, changes are early and often as the team seeks to quickly coalesce around a design approach that meets the project goals. Once the design and budget are agreed to by the owner, the design team moves into construction/permit drawing production. When the drawings are complete for permitting and bidding, wholesale changes often come with a cost to the design professional to implement and could extend the schedule. Following are several changes that typically come up for different building types, and ways to manage that.
Recycling Center
Issue: The project was designed with preliminary equipment electric loads as well as incomplete equipment drawings.
Resolution: Submit the permit set at 90 percent with the understanding that the permitting authorities will likely have comments that need to be addressed and anticipate the more complete equipment information will be available at that time.
Issue: After the project has been designed, but before construction, the owner won a local processing contract and needs to expand the tipping or bale storage area to accommodate more material to support a second shift.
Resolution: During the design development phase, plan out all likely/potential building growth area(s) including future equipment, increased bale storage needs, additional tipping, etc.
Transfer Station
Issue: The transfer station has been designed and permitted, but the owner has decided to transition the hauling from a live load to a drop-and-hook approach.
Resolution: Work with the civil engineer to identify existing or define new pavement areas that can accommodate the trailer parking. In addition, the environmental permitting may require that trailers are to be covered for leachate containment, so the drawing set may need to be revised to include this.
Hauling Company
Issue: The owner has decided to incorporate CNG fueling into a site, but the project was designed for a diesel fleet.
Resolution: Loop in the CNG vendor for the CNG station and slow fill network. Work with the owner to identify the impacts to the site and building plans as well as the suitability of gas service available allows this to be a feasible approach. Quickly work to define all the changes needed to the shop plans, as the requirements for Minor or Major Repair Garages will likely require extensive changes to the electric and HVAC plan sets. Work as quickly as possible to define the required changes and work with the construction partner to confirm the construction cost.
While it is preferred to capture all the needs to the project at the initial information gathering phase, by working quickly to define the additional needs and incorporate that into the plan set, the impacts of changes can be limited and incorporated into the sub-contractor buy-out.
Change Management鈥擟onstruction
There are many reasons why changes come up during construction. Many times, it is hard for the client to visualize the space on paper, and once they see it in person, they realize an approach will just not work. Also, sometimes, for new business units, the local management is hired after construction has commenced and they make some requested updates. The issue is not that there are changes, as that is impossible to avoid, but how the team addresses them that informs their success or failure.
Recycling Center
Issue: During the construction phase of a refit of an existing recycling facility, it was decided that the tipping floor slab is going to need repair or replacement.
Resolution: The owner and the construction and design teams should quickly identify the preferred approach or some options and present that to the subcontractor for pricing. A tipping slab could have several options, including: full removal and replacement, patching in part, or scarifying the surface and applying a high-strength topping. With the pricing and schedule of the proposed options in hand, the general contractor (GC) would present them to the owner. This would be followed with a change order for the preferred approach.
Issue: As the recycling equipment vendor is installing their system, they identify several overhead items that will be in the way of their crew in the coming weeks.
Resolution: Priority #1 on this would be to not impact the critical path installation. The GC should immediately notify the owner and then work with the subcontractor to get those items moved and direct the subcontractor to track the hours for that work. At the same time, they should keep the owner in the loop of a potential change order. Once the schedule risk is addressed, the GC can go back to the plan set and identify if the items in the way were known issues on the plan, items that were installed that deviated from the drawings, or items that were not contemplated as issues during the design because they did not appear to be impediments to the equipment based on the vendors drawings. Depending on the cause (and responsibility) of the issue, it will impact who is covering the cost for the modification.
Hauling Company
Issue: A new facility is being built, and the air and lube distribution was initially identified as 鈥渂y owner鈥�. A new maintenance manager has been hired, and they want this work to be included in the GC鈥檚 scope as a turn-key package.
Resolution: The project team should work to define the added scope鈥檚 parameters. If the owner has a preferred vendor, they should be looped in at this time. Whether that vendor is to be a subcontractor to the GC or has an MSA with the owner will vary by project. Regardless, the air and lube system should be designed, and the design team should confirm with the Authority Having Jurisdiction whether any additional permits are needed. The GC should work to lock in the value for that work and issue a change order and any schedule impacts should be included at that time.
Develop a Clear Strategy
During the lifetime of your project, you should always look at changes as an opportunity to get your project closer to the ideal. Incorporating knowledgeable and experienced project partners that have seen these situations before can further benefit your team as they can help you avoid repeating the same mistakes. To aim for perfection is a good goal to be sure, but to plan for changes and have clear strategies to address the unavoidable changes that come up helps to ensure that your project can stay on schedule and budget. | WA
Jeff Eriks is President and Evan Williams is a Design Project Manager at Cambridge Companies, Inc., a design-build firm, specializing in the environmental and waste industries with more than 30 years of experience covering more than 250 projects. During this time, Cambridge has successfully completed all types of solid waste design-build projects including transfer stations, recycling centers/MRFs, RNG facilities, truck and heavy equipment maintenance shops, landfill support facilities, and more. The Cambridge team continually monitors industry trends and ever-evolving needs to provide superior and relevant solutions when planning and building new facilities to ultimately benefit clients needing design-build solutions.
Contact Jeff at [email protected] or Evan at [email protected]. For more information, visit .