Articles
Materials, selection & how we build
Notes from the field on how we build: project guidance, material comparisons, and the occasional how-to for the trade.
Building a church: sanctuary, classrooms and the first service
A building committee walked us through their existing sanctuary on a Tuesday afternoon, and the first thing the pastor described was what the room felt like on…
Read the article →Auto dealership construction: showroom, service drive and opening day
The manufacturer's rep walks a showroom with a binder, and the binder wins. The tile is the specified tile, the lighting hits the specified color temperature…
Read the article →Gym and fitness studio build-outs: what the space has to carry
The first thing we look at in a proposed gym space is not the finish board. It is the floor. A second-floor retail bay that was framed for clothing racks is no…
Read the article →Car wash construction: getting the site and equipment right
The first thing we mark on a car wash site is not the building. It is the path of a car: where it turns in, where it queues, where it stops to pay, where it en…
Read the article →Dental office build-outs: the details behind every chair
The first drawing we ask a dentist for is not the floor plan. It is the equipment layout from the dental supply company, the one that shows every chair, every…
Read the article →The punch list: how a job actually gets finished
The punch walk on a hotel floor starts at the elevator lobby with the owner, the designer, a roll of blue tape and the principal who has been on the job since…
Read the article →Building through a Texas summer: heat, crews and the schedule
By two in the afternoon in late July the slab on a Houston job site reads well over a hundred degrees, and a framing crew that put up a wall an hour in the mor…
Read the article →Six budgeting errors that sink commercial projects (and the fixes)
Halfway through a hotel renovation an owner showed us the spreadsheet he had built eighteen months earlier. The construction number was close. What was missing…
Read the article →Design-build or design-bid-build: choosing how to buy your project
An owner called us last spring with a finished set of drawings, three bids that did not agree with each other, and a lease date that had already been pushed on…
Read the article →Why a change order costs what it does on a commercial job
A change order for a single relocated door came across a desk last spring, and it was not the door that cost money. It was the header already framed, the elect…
Read the article →Assisted living and senior housing construction costs in Texas
From the parking lot, an assisted living community and a garden-style apartment complex can look like the same building. Inside the corridor the difference sta…
Read the article →Gas station and c-store construction: what sets the cost
Stand at a fuel site the week the tanks go in and you will see most of the budget lying in an open excavation. The store, the part a customer walks into, is a…
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