The Value of Bringing Your Builder in Early

Written by: Brock Mellema, Senior Project Manager at FCC Construction, Inc

FCC Construction, Inc.

I won't tell you design-build is taking over the industry. I don't have the data for that claim. What I can tell you is what I see on our projects here in West Michigan, working with owners who bring a builder into the room while the design is still on the table. 

Most of the owners I work with are not large corporations with a staff dedicated to running construction. They are experts in their own business, and they have one every-decade project in front of them. What they want is a single partner who carries that project from early budgeting through completion, so they can stay focused on the work they actually know.

Early involvement gives them something a traditional bid process cannot: real cost visibility while the decisions are still open. When we are at the table during design, we run constructability reviews while the drawings can still change. We price options as the architect draws them. Owners get budget feedback at every milestone, and that feedback comes from the people who will do the work.

FCC Construction Inc.

That's what makes the pricing reliable. FCC self-performs excavation, carpentry, and steel fabrication and erection, so pricing on those scopes comes from our own crews. In practice, that means we can run honest value analysis on structural and framing options while they can still move, coordinate directly with the structural and MEP engineers on sequencing, and build the budget in phases as the design matures, so the number sharpens at every step.

Then something unexpected happens, because something always does. A material delay. A design conflict. A site condition nobody planned for. Early coordination is what lets the team work around it. Problems get caught and solved before they turn into delays.

There is a benefit here that never shows up on a budget line. Getting everyone in the room early builds real working relationships between our team, the trade partners, and the engineers. When the whole group solves the same problems from day one, people take ownership of the parts they helped shape. That ownership shows up in the finished work. Quality goes up. Late cost changes go down. The owner has a better experience start to finish.

A few assumptions come up often enough that I address them before owners ask.

Owners sometimes assume the builder has to have an in-house design team. We don't have one. We partner closely with architecture and engineering firms across West Michigan, and those partnerships are part of what makes the process work.

 Owners also assume design-build covers only the core building. On the projects we run this way, it extends to the MEP trades as well.

And I hear the worry about being locked into one contractor for the life of the project. We separate design and construction into two phases. Owners see real costs at the end of design and then decide whether to carry us forward into construction.

If you are weighing this against a traditional design-bid-build process, my advice is short. Get your builder to the table early. You'll get a clearer budget sooner and one point of accountability from the first sketch through the final walkthrough.