With almost 25 years in business, the Epsilon team is often called in during a project’s inception to provide valuable input and help streamline the design process. Our current six-part series that explores the advantages of the Design Assist approach gives some great examples of how projects can be optimized with this approach – but even before a project methodology like Design Assist is selected, teams should be considering the relative merits and impacts of Off Site Construction on their upcoming project.
To that end, here are a few of the questions we believe every team should be challenging themselves with. These are often framed as risks, to help identify the importance of specific issues and to aid in decision-making when there are potential conflicts between goals. For example, an increase in labor costs may be acceptable in order to maintain critical timelines for key milestones.
What’s the acceptable risk tolerance for:
- Labor shortages?
- Labor cost increases (or variability)?
- Delivery and installation timeline slippage?
- Raw material cost increases (or variability)?
- Weather delays?
- Scope creep?
- Project cost escalation (or unpredictability)?
If the answers to any of these questions drives a team to more closely consider Off Site Construction (OSC) for their central utility systems, other questions of a more design/build nature come to mind:
- How important is the OSC’s in-house engineering? Or, put another way, how important is ongoing access to that engineering team?
- What type of quality control and pre-shipping inspections are required?
- Is there a predisposition to specific brands or manufacturers?
- How will first-cost and lifecycle-cost of equipment and systems be evaluated?
- What are the owner’s maintenance and operational requirements for the desired facility and systems?
- Will the OSC systems replace or augment existing systems and structures?
- What type of on-site staging and laydown is available – and for how long?
- Will the need for temporary systems be reduced or eliminated by utilizing an expedited OSC approach?
These are just a few of the questions that we encourage our clients and project teams to ask during initial central utility system project planning. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the importance of getting experienced, successful Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) involved in the project before specifications are created. The planning phase is where a little expertise goes a long way, and a wealth of expertise – like that found at Epsilon – adds significant value to a project without a corresponding increase in costs.
Get in touch today to tap into the Epsilon experience for your next Central Utility Plant.
