Cursed By Knowing The Numbers

succinctly--simply but no simpler--is the first test of converting the dream to reality.  You have your site--now what?

What are the steps you need to take as an Owner?

Architects and designers have a design voice, an intrinsic momentum of how they resolve spatial issues, frame views, and balance form and function.  Your potential investment also has a voice--as yet unrevealed.  The first step you need to take is to find the architect with the voice that matches the voice of your dream.

Architects are trained and work their entire careers developing this voice. The architect's voice can document, communicate and resolve your dream in a way that the builder, the community, and the other professionals on the team understand in a way that risks can be quantified and the work priced, or "bought out" in the parlance of our industry.

The steps are:

1. Collect photos, examples, movies, of what this voice is to you.  I once had a client that told me he wanted the home in the movie "Legends of the Fall". Hard to get a clearer voice than that.  Another told me he wanted to bring David Adler and Tommy Church back to life and commission them.  A voice from the past...
2. Walk projects with architects.  Have them show you the opportunities and constraints.  Understand the resolution.  Understand the voice behind the resolution.  Rinse and Repeat until you find a voice that provides you with the next level of insight.
3. Have your architect develop the opportunities and constraints map on your site.  Make sure they understand permitting and approvals constraints--this can be an expensive omission.
4. Have your architect iterate on your program.  Do they get it?
5. Don't rush into a schematic design yet.  This is typically the first deliverable--but you can spend a lot of money generating design after design.  If you understand what can be done with the site, your first iteration on schematics will be very close to the final answer.
6. Start with a floor/site plan complete with inside/outside relationships, and exterior elevation of the primary facade. Overlay opps/constraints map on this.  Look at kitchen/living and master suite spaces--with furniture layout-- to understand flow/privacy/symmetry/arrival sequence.   This exercise will probably run $20K +/- $15K.

First cut at a budget: 100% of interior square footage + 150% of hi volume interior footage + 50% of terrace footage+100% of pool/spa footage + 5% of landscaped area footage multiplied by the current average cost per square foot for your area.  Add 30% of this total for soft costs, permitting and contingency.  Voila, you have to go make some more money.

Check against approvals constraints.  Sign off on the numbers. 

It will all be ok--there's nothing like a home designed around a dream.

when stories abound of the cost, the difficulty, and the time involved?  Because for some of us, the essence of building is transforming quotidian, real world needs into art that works for us. 

The design of the single family, private home is an architectural touchstone.  Even though they take more time, more decisions than ever thought possible, and are utterly irrelevant socially, they are the crucible of how we want to live our lives today.

"When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really wanted to know in the worst way--before one began."

--Nietzsche

The modern American home provides an owner and an architect an opportunity to create a singular design reflecting the outward and inner directed motivations of the owner.  Much as wealthy patrons commissioned concertos or portraits, Americans see their homes today in much the same way.

Paul Goldberger (he was the architectural critic for the NY Times) wrote a piece entitled Houses as Art (12MAR95 NYT Magazine) where he described three general categories of people who undertake "this mad indulgence"

1. Patrons motivated by pure belief--the house is an opportunity to prove the power of architecture.
2. Patrons motivated by hubris--They are trophy hunters and a home represents a chance to reinforce their place in the food chain;
3. Patrons motivated by the collecting instinct--the home is another way of indulging in a passion for acquiring art.

Goldberger then mentioned a fourth kind of patron, "the accidental patron, the client who does not intentionally start out on the mission of building a serious house but who finds a talented architect, establishes a comfortable relationship with him and, in the process of fulfilling the basic needs of a house, ends up transcending them and creating a great work."

This is building as challenge.  A challenge to the patron to advance a clear vision of what is to be achieved by the home.  A challenge to the architect to walk that fine line between architecture as unlivable art and a connection to the world that uniquely guides the architectural vision into practicality.

For when we build, our goal is to practice an elegant efficiency and steady pace to get to the heart of the problem and build a home that has both a unique sense of place as well as to provide shelter with an emotional intensity not found anywhere else.

As for Nietzsche, my antidote to his described fruitlessness is to keep building--because whatever we have  built, we are always beginning again.

probably has a house on it already, especially if you live in Northern California.

The increasing occurrence of teardowns is due to the fact that:

1. We haven't built many new roads in the last twenty years, while the number of cars per household (1.9) is now greater than the number of people (1.8).

2. Many of the better sites were built on with summer cottages after the 06 quake>>fire. Although the "cottage framing" many of these older places have doesn't meet modern codes, it is the site, the light, the tranquility and the views that you are really paying for.

3. The lots that are available now were either not buildable without modern engineering and construction technology, or had constraints that still exist, but can be discounted and still have a transaction.

So what do you look for when buying a site? Southern exposure for light, <40% slope for buildability (in Marin, Sonoma and Napa, anyway), rock close to the surface, and all utlities close by.

Know your microclimates--in Sausalito they seem to change from block to block.

Secondarily you, or your architect, needs to clearly understand site coverage and massing (floor area ratio, building heights, shadowing adjacent property) and circulation for cars and people.

Architects want input from a builder as they progress on a design to check constructability, review details, and most importantly, to check the budget.

Owners pay for this review.  What is sometimes missing is the accountability for the quality of the numbers--marketing numbers do us no good. The constructability of details needs to be part of the review and recommendation.  You don't want to know how many times I have heard whining about flashing details during construction when not a peep was made during preconstruction over the same detail.  What you need is true construction expertise--in pricing and constructability.

What is the faster/better/smarter way to buy preconstruction services?

1.Set the baseline.  You need to know quantities, units, and unit costs making up the cost estimate.  Lump sum numbers are basically useless.

2. Set the finishes.  You need to price off a finish schedule.  Stain grade vs paint grade, stone vs tile, etc.  You can iterate up or down on the finishes to get a budget number circled once you know your quantities.

3. Identification of assemblies benefiting from design build or cost plus approaches to getting it right.  On one recent job, we were under construction when the manufacturer's rep backpedaled and would not warranty the installation of their material--two years after they had sold this material to the architect as perfect for the application.  The subcontractor was sweating bullets.  After a great deal of caveatting, to-ing and fro-ing, and mockups, the material went in, looked great, and the subcontractor ended up looking like a hero--and deservedly so.  These assemblies need to be called out during preconstruction and everyone locked in a room until a consensus is reached at that time--not when you are burning $60K a month in OH&P on an active jobsite.

4. Review design for warrantable installations.  In the world of design once/build once/operate once homes, sometimes we get a little too far out on the design limb, making materials perform unnatural acts.  Best to know what is warrantable--or how to make it warrantable--upfront rather than when we don't have the time to develop a good workaround.

Don't you get this if you just bid it to a couple of contractors?  Not really. You will get a partial #1, perhaps broken out by trade.  Bottom line numbers are pretty useless and you certainly don't get 2, 3, or 4.  Those remain as gotchas to be negotiated during the building process--when you have neither the time nor great leverage.

What is the right price to pay for 1 to 4 above?  I have paid from about $0.75 to $2.00 PSF, although I have seen preconstruction lines on projects--before I got involved--add up to $9.50 PSF.  Ouch.  Have your team work to these four steps and you will start your project in much better shape.

..are a part of any construction and development project. Whether the changes come from an element we did not foresee, or something that we changed our mind about, the development process seems very similar to the way a friend used to describe how she skied the moguls--"It is a series of linked recoveries"

This chart breaks out the cause of changes as a portion of total cost overages.

1.  Design errors and omissions are the elements a prudent designer would have included in a set of contract documents.  Examples are modifications to one location that do not ripple through to details, or changes in architectural drawings that were not picked up in structurals or MEP's.

2.  Trade Contractor Coordination is the cost of performing work that falls in the gap between trade contractor contracts.  Kitchens are prime examples of where these gaps could occur.  Cabinet maker's boxes do not align correctly with architectural woodwork, or HVAC, or appliance connections.  Coordinating plumbing--ie roof drains--with interior framing is another example.  Architectural drawings show intent, Structural drawings show member sizes, and it is left to the general contractor to get it all to fit.

3.  Unforeseen conditions</strong> are those uncharted items that are discovered only upon opening up the work area. Examples include dry rot discovered after demolition of a building interior, a geothermal hot spring discovered where a winery's underground chai, or barrel storage, facility is to be built, or soils conditions materially different from the soils investigation provided.

4.  Excessive change order pricing occurs when changes or additional work is ordered outside of the natural progression of the work, many times restricting the optimum pace and intensity of work being put into place.  Excessive pricing also occurs when a vendor is trying to make up lost margin over incomplete pricing.  Going to a sole vendor gives more pricing power to that vendor.

5. Code compliance is the cost of implementing corrections or changes to the work after an inspection by the authorities having jurisdiction over the work.  Obtaining final signoff on permits is often at the discretion of the authorities, and sometimes gaining this signoff requires additional work not in the contract.

6.  Owner scope changes are qualitative changes to finishes, or components.  Additional cost also comes from additions to the scope of work through added systems, or changes in the critical path necessary to incorporate these new requirements.  Qualitative changes ripple through a finish schedule, driving other changes to maintain a contextual relationship.  For example, basements are often an afterthought in the design process, but the intensity of building systems on this level and the fact it is the first part of the building constructed can trigger a lot of scope change early in the project.

The challenge is maintaining the pace and intensity of the work while folding in these changes.  We've met this challenge by:

• "building" the project on paper first through good scheduling and understanding the finish schedule
• making the general contractor responsible for any trade contractor changes.  If it is shown in the documents, the Owner is entitled to it.  Performance specification acceptance on waterproofing and acoustical aspects of the building.
• establishing a joint contingency account for design errors/omissions, unforeseens, and code compliance.  Motivation to resolve these changes faster/better/smarter is achieved through splitting  funds left in this account at the end of the project--money goes straight to the builder's bottom line
• establishing unit costs for installation at the time of writing the initial contract provides protection against excessive change order pricing, or at least a basis to understand where the pricing difference lies.

Owner scope changes are managed through our instant feasibility testing to provide a quick cost/benefit check before the builder spends any time pricing or implementing a change.  Limiting cost plus reimbursement on qualitative changes to tasks only on the critical path.  Owner supplies materials to keep on-time.  Coordinating building systems in the basement level by constructing this level on paper first with all players working together.

Changes make projects more expensive and run more lethargically than most realize.  Keeping our projects on-time and on-budget requires a roll-up-your-sleeves cooperative attitude to understand the real impact of any changes and the real benefit

There is realistically only so much recovery that can happen on a project before burnout occurs.  Keeping focus on achieving quality at the intended pace and intensity eliminates a great deal of contemplated changes before they start to slow things up.  Build it twice--the first time on paper. 

 Remember, oftentimes your first solution is much closer to the end result than you think.

...and why are we owners so in love with it?

At least until construction pricing started rising here 2% per month...

The short definition of fast track is that you start digging the hole, installing your utility connections, and building a foundation prior to completing design of  the superstructure.

The benefit is that you get to overlap your final design time with the first phase of the construction period. This takes a couple of months out of the design/construction schedule.  It allows you to dial in your exact finishes when you get a chance to walk the building, and get a "full scale model" perspective of the light, air and spatial relationships.

It seems like we only perform fast track delivery anymore, much to the consternation of our talented (and opinionated) architects. Given the fact that this is what the market demands, what and how can you fast-track?

We will not commence a project until we have all permits and firm fixed price contracts for the following:

• We complete design on everything related to the exterior envelope, structure, waterproofing and rough openings for doors and windows.
• We complete design on HVAC system supply and return duct sizing and locate units.  We locate kitchen exhaust fans and ducts.
• We locate dryer exhaust ducts and waste plumbing returns.
• We complete all MEP work for each floor, detailing connection sizing and location of verticals.

Basically--we do all work under one building permit.  This takes a great deal of the approvals risk out of the budget, and allows us one or two passes of building it on paper to get our numbers close to right.

We price off a version 1.00 of the finish schedule.  Many of these items can be placeholders--the trick is the thickness of the assembly needed for stone or paneling--including any mortar beds.  What we want to fix are wall, ceiling and subfloor dimensioning and relationships--top of subfloor, and back of mortar beds in bathrooms.  Casework and cabinetry are placeholders, with unit costs budgeted in according to the level of finish indicated in the finish schedule.  Landscape and pool are placeholders.

In short, we have a complete budget tied to a placeholder finish schedule, that we can iterate off of as construction gets underway.  This eliminates a good portion of construction risk, and yields a cost to complete and time to complete estimate that is a reliable budget and planning tool.

...is my definition of the perfect jobsite.  This is the responsibility of the superintendent, and it is the best way to build and maintain momentum to an on-time, on-budget completion.  It sends a message to all that enter the grounds that this team is professional and will deliver dramatically distinctive results.

The costs to keep a site lean, mean, and spotlessly clean are a fraction of the costs to recover from damaged materials, lost time accidents, or the message that professionalism does not count.

How clean is your job?

  Adding architecture, capital, knowledge, and labor to dirt successfully has four risks to it:

Approvals Risk--what you want or believe should be on a site is not what the authorities grant you the right to do.
Capitalization Risk--you have undercapitalized or over-leveraged your project financing, putting undue stress on the construction or operation of it.
Construction Risk--the quality, cost, and delivery time of improvements is outside the window of acceptability.
Leaseup & Operating Risk--you cannot produce the amount and quality of income you need to pay back investors, lenders, and yourself.

How do you deal with these risks?

Four ways:

1. You understand the risks--quantitatively and qualititatively.  You price it.  You put a probability on it happening to you.
2. You recruit talent that can help you to reduce these risks.
3. You maintain a dialogue with everyone involved in eliminating or mitigating this risk.  Focus, focus, focus. Faster/better/smarter.  Price it again.
4. You track mitigation/elimination until the exposure is behind you.
   

Approvals risk is the biggie in the markets I work in.  Projects can take ten years to gain entitlements.  There is limited ability to lay off risk on others.  There are limited exit strategies.  You are walking point through a very dangerous process--but one that is absolutely required to make the difference you want to make in our built environment.

I have always gotten my projects approved--part luck, part working with great people, part knowing what to take on (and what not).  Part knowing the numbers.  Paranoia helps, too.

And you really only have one shot at getting it right. Ed Logan, a planning professor of mine back at the 'Tute likened project approvals to his time as a WWII bombardier in a B-24 over Germany..."Your success is inversely proportional to your time over the target."

In the next few weeks, I am going to be looking at how my industry and I deal with each of these risks.

Radiant heating is high on the list of wants in almost every one of the homes I have produced.  The comfort, the invisibility, and the economies of radiant heating make it an attractive alternative. 

There are ways of designing your system that optimize the installation. Use this post when discussing heating systems with your designer.

There are four five things to understand with any radiant system:

1. There is a one to four hour thermal lag because the system is heating up such a large mass--a stone floor, for example.
2. Because of the thermal lag, we don't interconnect this source of heat with the split system as radiant systems are not meant to cycle on and off.  We do include a second outdoor temp sensor that adjusts the water temperature automatically with changes in outdoor temperature.
3. In California or sunny western states where there is a large diurnal temperature range during parts of the year, the system is best suited for areas that are not influenced by these daily temperature swings--northern exposure and basements.
4. The system is most effective in spaces where there is not a lot of solar heat gain during the day, ie in northern/northeastern/basement spaces.  I am hesitant to install these units in spaces with a large amount of southern exposure, and believe they are actually counterproductive in spaces with a large amount of western exposure due to the thermal lag.
5. Spaces with a large amount of glass and high ceilings can develop cold drafty convection currents at the windows on cold days that can overwhelm the system.  Look carefully at tubing sizing and spacing to understand how to compensate for large expanses of glass. 

Radiant heating is best understood as a steady-state, set-it and forget it system.  Most of the jobs I do, we design the system to be set at 72 degrees.  We augment the radiant system with a split system that provides any necessary cooling in summer, and responds to calls for additional heat in the winter, and in spaces with potential for temperature swings.  We don't overthink the handoff (there is none) between the two systems--radiant provides the baseline, and the split system responds to your immediate requests.

You need the split system to provide the responsiveness, and the radiant system for quiet, clean comfort.

The heat in a radiant system can come from one of two sources--electrical heating mats or tubing with hot water from a boiler.  I use mats in small isolated areas--have one in my master bathroom floor, for example.  They are not efficient providers of heat on a $/BTU basis, but work in areas where you can't have leaks or if you just want comfort heating in small areas.

I prefer to put radiant heating under stone, tile or concrete rather than hardwood.  They are more tolerant of temperature shocks than wood.  Hardwood seems to like it best in the same comfort zone as us people--that is 65 to 80 degrees.  Warmer than that, and the hardwood dries out and shrinks.  Water temp in the tubing is typically 100 degrees F +/- 10 degrees.  If wood is the look you want, look at engineered flooring or floating floor systems that are more stable with these higher temperatures.  Carpet diminishes the efficiency of the system and traps heat in the floor, both no-nos.

Hydronic radiant systems designed around a PEX tubing system like Wirsbo should give you trouble free enjoyment for a number of years.  I caution that these systems will leak, it is a matter of when, not if.  In the interim, you will enjoy the comfort, even warmth and "invisibility" of this great heating alternative.

The numbers?  The systems I have put in have ranged from $12 to $22 PSF for hydronic systems.

Gaining the right to build is the second most critical skill a developer needs, after the ability to do the math and handicap a potential project.

What is the first step?  Read your adopted codes.  Understand, or have your architect explain to you, what your as-of-right envelope is.  Unless your project is open space or a wetland, there is a bulk, massing and use envelope that will provide you with an initial square footage, use, height, and percent of site utilization.    In my opinion, if what I need to produce fits within the adopted codes, I have an 80% chance of getting my project approved.

You ask:  Why only 80%, grasshopper?  Because if you read the codes carefully, there are often conflicts that give the power of discretion to the commissions, boards, and staff that have the ability to grant you your entitlements.

To understand the discretionary element, study the envelope on other properties in your neighborhood.  Find out where your proposed use compares with others in your neighborhood in terms of density, height, parking, shadow bulk. How do you compare? If you recently purchased your property, go down to the planning office and look at the public file on the project.  Look at the history of it.  Read staff reports on similar uses and sites.  After you have done your survey of comparable sites, find out where you stack up.  Are you in the top 50%, 25% 10%?  Your likelihood of success drops the closer you get to the top of the stack.

You will now understand what is as of right, and what is discretionary.  Envision this as an envelope of use, height, footprint, and bulk on your property.   The further you go outside your envelope, the process gets increasingly expensive, the processing time increases, and your likelihood of success decreases.

 Once you understand the numbers, then you can proceed with the how.

Here is a recent example of how you do it.  Very impressive technique  by someone who has made a tremendous contribution to the City of Cupertino, whose company is their largest taxpayer, and needs to do a fifty acre campus.

I am always trying to understand the numbers behind why things get built, and why they don't.

And I am amazed at the things that get promoted when the math does not work.  The market seems to get last bat, but it reminds me of what my father used to tell me:  "It's the third guy that owns the property that makes money.  The first two lose their dough."

One of the most illuminating books I've read was Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. 

A little long winded, but his point is well taken.

Paulos admits that

"at least part of the motivation for any book is anger, and this book is no exception. I'm distressed by a society which depends so completely on mathematics and science and yet seems to indifferent to the innumeracy and scientific illiteracy of so many of its citizens."

Have a good weekend.

Kitchens, and their design, seem to provoke more questions than any other space.  I tried to field a number of them last night at a friend's house, and woke this morning with the goal of walking through with my readers how I put a kitchen together.

It first is the "Am I paying too much?" question.  All in, a kitchen with new cabinets, new countertops and professional grade appliances will run $125 to $250K.  The spread is primarily in the cabinets and the remodeling work to make the space ready for cabinets--think lighting and kitchen exhaust fan.

The second is "Why are cabinets so expensive".  OK, let's back up.

Let's start with the question that should be asked: What will be the primary functions of this space?

 Family food preparation, entertainment, refuel and go ops? gathering place? Morning, evening, weekends?

How do I plan the kitchen zones?   Julius Blum, a German manufacturer of cabinets and hardware, has a great online zone planner  that helps you understand the dynamics of planning for a kitchen that works.  Great helpful hints.

Then budget.  Professional appliances will run $25 to $75K for a complete complement and retail prices are set by the manufacturer--so not a lot of leeway.  My recommendations are

• gas cooktop (we cook on a Viking and can recommend it),
• convection ovens, and
• a kitchen exhaust fan size and location that works.

Everything else is personal preference.

Upper and lower <strong>cabinetry</strong> runs from $500 per lineal foot (IKEA) to $1500PLF for custom built.

I have been unimpressed with the imported european cabinets.  Timing (twelve to fourteen week lead time and they missed the delivery date forcing us to air ship the boxes), the quality, and the final installed appearance were underwhelming.  TO their credit they do an impressive sales job--If its good enough for Gwyneth Paltrow, its good enough for you--but on a recent job, the cabinets (again airshipped from Germany) were the wrong size and it took them seven weeks to replace them on a critical path job.  For 20% more, we could have had a completely custom kitchen with furniture grade finishes--on time without the hassle.

Stone countertops run from $80 to $300 per lineal foot of countertop, based primarily on the type of stone.

Kitchen exhaust fans need to be sized to remove 100 to 150 CFM per square foot of cooktop, 28" to 32" (70 to 85cm) above the surface of the cooktop.

Lighting, particularly with California's new energy codes--50% of total wattage in a kitchen to be fluorescent--is a critical area.  Island lighting, task lighting, ambient lighting.

The key problem in watching your numbers too closely is that you lose sight of the team.  I've done this.  Overly focused on my hot-list, cost to complete, or pricing out options, I forget that these homes are designed and built by professionals who make this their livelihood.

In the heat of the moment, all you need to know is how much more time you are going to need, your next three milestones, and who needs help getting their job done.

In the end, all you have is your team (or what's left of it) a huge pile of paper, and your goal, however achieved.  Although the paper is important, it is you and your team that got you to the goal.

I don't like smacking other people's deals down...I know how much work goes into making something happen, into breathing life into it.  I know what it is like to have rocks thrown at my projects.  It hurts. 

That said--this is a deal that once I understood the numbers, and looked at all the reports, plans, and budgets, made me scratch my head.  No, it actually left me dumbfounded that this passes for planning and what we want on this site. 

This 400,000 square foot, no tax paying, project went through its approvals--including a bulletproof EIR--by EDAW--and is now facing the construction risk part of the sequence. They whacked over a third of the project in 2005 to keep in within the $220 million budget they were given in 2003.  Working drawings are in process.  Meanwhile, construction costs on private sector projects are going up 2% a month in the Bay Area.

The land is 275 acres of some of the best waterfront, southern exposure property I know of, adjacent to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, next to a good windsurfing beach, and is 17 miles from downtown San Francisco.  Access to interstate 580 and 101 are adjacent.  And did I mention there is ferry service adjacent that goes direct to the Ferry Building in downtown SF?  And if you are a legal resident of California--you are part owner (along with 34 million of your neighbors).

Yep.  Its the new Glamour Slammer, or in official terms, the Condemned Inmate Complex Project at San Quentin.  I won't get into the politics here and here.  Or what the Sierra Club says here about an earlier project on the grounds.  Or what the State Auditor said in 2004.   And at a cost of roughly $270K/bed budget where the average statewide cost is $150K/bed.

So how did we come to deserve all this penal goodness?  Let's take a look at the numbers...

The state did a reuse study  in 2001 that showed relocating the entire 5,700 inmate requirement to a new location would cost $800 million.  The land was worth about $100 million under existing land use policies (500 units of housing) after demolition and cleanup.  If a denser transit village option with new transit hub, ferry terminal and 2,100 units of housing were entitled, the state would recognize roughly an additional $300 million.  If the property were entitled for 3,500 units, the state would recognize roughly an additonal $100 million on top of this. 

The State Auditor's math basically said our county could use the property to help solve some of its housing and transportation issues, but the state would have to spend roughly $400 million to build a new facility elsewhere.

Status: The Department of Corrections is completing working drawings for the Condemned Inmate Complex at this time.  BCDC is reviewing Major Permit Application 2-06 to place an electrified fence, guard tower, etc. within the 100 foot shoreline band of the site.

Baseline: San Quentin State Prison is located on 275 acres located on San Francisco Bay.  It is home to approximately 5,700 inmates and 1,600 employees.  640 of these inmates have been condemned, and are awaiting execution.  This number grows by about 20 per year.

A bill requiring San Quentin to be decommissioned no later than December 31, 2010, SB901 died in the State Senate in on January 31, 2006.  Methinks it died because it called for a complete project CEQA exemption--which would save a couple of years, but asked for an unallowable lack of oversight and absence of public dialogue.

The Legislature budgeted $220 million in August 03 to build a new prison on San Quentin grounds because the antiquated facilities, lack of an electrified fence and a security perimeter increased the likelihood of escape of these extremely violent prisoners, particularly in the event of a major earthquake.   The state currently has a 5,000 maximum-security prison bed shortage.  California state law requires all male condemned inmates to be kept at San Quentin.

The Department of Corrections borrowed $8.5 million from the General Fund in 03 to start planning and approvals.  An EIR was done in 2004. The initial cost estimate was 400,000 square feet at a cost of $139PSF or 43% of the total budget.  Soft Costs and site prep were estimated at 31%.  Contingencies and allowances were budgeted at 26%.

Meanwhile, the County has prepared a draft land use plan that states "Reuse of the site...would be limited to that which result in impacts no greater than impacts from prison use of the site prior to its proposed reuse."

OK--so how do we quantify these impacts?

The Upside--Marin County residents and visitors would get 86 acres of open space, a new bayfront trail, a city, a multi-modal ferry transit hub with deep water ferry access (no more dredging), a museum in a historic schoolhouse, and hundreds of affordable housing units--if the vision plan is to be believed, a Cinque Terre on the Bay.  The vision plan is available here.

Water use by this transit village is estimated at 450 acre feet /year (AFY), 500AFY less than the 961AFY used by the prison in 2003.  This savings constitutes more than 10% of our existing potable water shortfall for the county, perhaps delaying the construction of MMWD's desalinization plant. 

Property tax revenue would be in the range of $8 to $10 Million per year upon full buildout.  The existing site pays no taxes.  15 to 20% of the housing would be set aside as affordable--that's 300 to 400 units in a county with the highest housing prices in the country.   A pedestrian, car-free environment (think Cinque Terre).

Don't forget "Due to the crowded, antiquated facilities, inadequate physical plant security; and insufficient medical, exercise and service space, the department {Department of Corrections] has concluded that housing the condemned male population in the current facilities at San Quentin poses a severe safety and security threat to the public, staff, and other inmates".

The State of California would have a new prison, designed to the latest codes, and in a location where operational costs would be more reasonable.

The Downside--There is a $400 million net cost to the state to replace the existing prison in another location.  (that is about $12 per California resident, or about $65 per Bay Area resident, or $2200 per Marin County resident). Traffic from the site would increase five-fold with the housing and transit hub operations, even with a better modal split. (Existing 3050 trips/day, Glamour Slammer adds a projected 213 trips/day, Transit Village estimate is 15,900 trips/day per EDAW).  Sir Francis Drake would have to be widened from 2 to 4 or 6 lanes fm 580 to the site to accommodate this and add an westbound onramp. 

The Rub--The environmental review process for a re-use of this site is long, expensive, fraught with loss of focus, and does not take into account both the direct and the ripple effect of the multiple benefits that a new community on the shores of the Bay would have on both sides of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge.

For example, in 2004 EDAW stated "this alternative [the tax paying, productive 4,000 resident transit village] is environmentally inferior to the proposed project {Glamour Slammer]."  Ouch.

  And this is what passes for planning today?  No wonder housing is so fricking expensive here--and so far away from where you work.  The "experts" can't even understand what the real benefits are.  It is not the consultant's fault, it is the way we frame the discussion about net impacts of different land uses.

Reuse will be limited to those land uses with impacts no greater than current impacts from prison ops.   How do you net out the impacts of a billion dollar project?  Does

• reducing our net water consumption,
• increasing our open space,
• our access to the Bay,
• providing thousands of construction jobs,
• developing 2100 units of housing within walking distance of transit options,
• deep water ferry access--no more dredging,
• hundreds of affordable housing units, and
• increasing our property tax base by $8 to $10 million

counterbalance the traffic increase?

Does bulldozing a 150 year old, antiquated, operationally risky, hard to staff, cramped prison with security issues and replacing it with a transit village on the sunny shores of San Francisco Bay count as a positive impact?

Does putting $1 billion of our capital to work productively on building this new community count as a positive impact?

My take away is that because we can't get our land planning act together, we can't effiectively recycle this property, and hence we lose an opportunity to recapture a great location. 

The wheels are in motion to spend up to $220 million here to house 1,400 condemned prisoners in a new facility to &quot;provide security for the public from some of the most violent inmates in the state&quot;.  On the sunny shores of San Francisco bay. 

To me, it looks like right project, wrong location.  This isn't a NIMBY reaction--it is simply not the best use, and we are using litigation and bureaucratic duress instead of  an action plan that listens to what this amazing site wants to be.

The Numbers--the Department of Corrections would have to reduce its annual operating costs by 7% over thirty years to get this relocation to pencil out for the taxpayers.  San Quentin is more expensive to operate, more dangerous for the corrections officers, and has recruitment and retention problems due to its location (only 14% of the labor force lives in Marin, including 86 homes on the grounds).  This shouldn't be hard to do.

The Risk--no one wants to own is to be responsible for breathing life into the vision  of a new community on the Bay.  The $10 million in at-risk capital and ten years to get this new community through the entitlement gauntlet to come out the other end with a walkable, new, productive community on the sunny shores of San Francisco Bay. </p>
<p>Instead we get a prison.  And plenty of vision studies that tell us what could have been. With an approvals process this broken, maybe that's what we deserve. 

One of the most powerful elements your architect can frame is daylight.

I was fortunate enough to be the project manager on a Ricardo Legorreta designed home.  One of the most powerful elements Ricardo directed was daylight into the bathrooms.  The skylights provided an elevating, sanitizing, and even empowering sense to the space.  Paired with the right stone--we used roman travertine--the room glows and rejuvenates you.

Skylights in bathrooms are a must have for me now in any home I have a design say in.  It is a modern, clean solution to enlivening this space.  The light from above is more natural than light ported in horizontally.  Backlighting at mirrors is no longer an issue.

 

Skylights over the vanity and in the shower are on my checklist.  Look at adding them to yours.

I work with someone who told me, "Skylights leak.  That's their job.:  True enough.  You have to weigh this when you build and select the final location of the skylight.  There are locations on the roof that are more prone to leaking than others.  But to me the tradeoff is well worth it.

And my wife says daylight is so much better when applying makeup.  Case closed.

Using the mogul skiing metaphor--that a project is merely a series of linked recoveries--then what is the probability of making it to the bottom of a run without some face first tongue-surfing--or more germane to this blog, completing a project on-time, on-budget?

Compound probability--the probability of an outcome dependent on a series of linked events--for example, the probability of obtaining two heads in two flips of a coin is 1/2 x 1/2 =1/4 or 25%, or five heads in five flips is (1/2)^5 or 1/32, or roughly 3%.

For a real world example, lets look at the feasibility cascade at recycling the 275 acres out at San Quentin.  To get an alternative, sustainable, job-creating land use going, there are three steps that have to be taken--

1. the State laws that require all condemned prisoners to be incarcerated at San Quentin, and executed there, has to be changed to allow for other locations in the State of California.
2. An alternative 320 acre site has to be identified and entitled.
3. The State has to end prison ops on the site and decommission the prison.

Lets say there is a 25% chance of the first happening, a 70% chance of the second event occurring and then a 85% chance of the third event occurring.   Multiply these together and you get an 15% probability of getting to first base.  Better than buying a lottery ticket, but not by much. 

When you are getting your head around a schedule, good probabilities make good estimates. And good estimates help you raise the confidence level of your schedule.  Which helps to get your deal capitalized.  And a good capitalization helps you get to an on-time, on-budget result.

A schedule that you have a high degree of confidence in, understand the probabilities and linkages, and that the team has bought into are a great focusing and forcing function.

What is a forcing function?  It is a behavior shaping constraint that prevents team members from losing sight of completion dates, deliverables, and helps to prevent common errors or mistakes.  An example of a forcing function is the approvals of dimensioned shop drawings for casework or cabinetry to prevent problems related to fit or alignment.

A schedule tuned to act as a forcing function clearly defines commitments and hand-offs between team members and motivates changes in perspective or behavior to meet these constraints.  It shows the cascade of milestones and identifies the critical path so that we understand how much time stands between us and turnover.

Is your schedule tuned to act as a forcing function?  Look for the following:

• handoffs defined as acceptances, not merely declaring victory and moving on.
• "chunkable" milestones instead of one long progress bar and a "miracle happens here" milestone.  Identify squeeze points such as close-in inspections that limit work-around options.
• Are schedule buffers called out?  A schedule buffer is adding a few days to a task for no apparent reason than contingency.  The next pass will look to replace schedule (or time) buffers with plan (or alternative location) buffers.
• Add add/cut periods after milestone completions as a way of  dialing in scope to check the cost to complete against the budget.
• What questions need to be answered to raise the confidence in the schedule?

A schedule as forcing function flushes out oversights and problem spaces, and helps team members understand dependencies and tackle risks earlier in the project.

When they understand the dependencies and inter-relationships between what they are responsible for and the rest of the team, it builds momentum and aids in early detection of problem spaces.

...contribute the glue, the focus, and the talent to make good stuff happen on a jobsite.  The focus on getting things done--on getting the entitlements, balancing cost and value during design, and driving construction through to an on-time, on-budget outcome--is the value a project manager brings.

Not every project needs a project manager.  As long as team members are willing to be responsible for communicating what needs to be done, simultaneously keep their eye both on the prize and their next three milestones, and are willing to jump into the breach to do what needs to be done to get things done, there is one less mouth to feed. 

There needs to be clear authority on keeping the project on-time and on-budget, and triaging issues. Much as a hospital ER has a lead doc deciding care for a patient, a project needs a voice that can make decisions and blaze the trail. This Venn diagram charts the space you start from.  If no one owns this space, dysfunction and finger pointing can be the result. 

The prime responsibility is to make the project, and all who contribute to it, as successful as possible.  This role is ambiguous, and requires a combination of conviction, confidence, and empathy to be effective.  You need:

• a top level view necessary to keep focus on where you are and where you need to be,
• the insight to ask the right questions, and the willingness to parachute in and do anything that needs to be done that no one else is doing (well).
• the focus on getting things done means keeping a simpler view of what you do.  But simple does not mean easy.

Tom Peters, in his essay, Pursuing the Perfect Project Manager, describes the paradoxes inherent in pursuing the required outcome.  Project management is a balancing act, an art that requires intuition, judgement and experience to resolve the raw inputs of capital, knowledge, labor and material into the desired asset.

Go "Make Good Stuff Happen!"

"...an architect has are the eraser in the drawing room and the sledgehammer on the construction site."

--Frank Lloyd Wright

Guess which one is cheaper?

A key point is  build twice--the first time on paper.  Changes late in the game get you twenty to fifty cents on the dollar in terms of value, not to mention the cost of the do-over.

This is why iterating finish schedules are so important. 

You start to understand materials in terms of thickness and edge conditions.  Good interiors derive from so-so interiors.  Mock-ups impact momentum a lot less than full scale model iteration.  Sometimes your best design is a clever take on working within the project's constraints.

Remember the carpenter's maxim:  "measure twice, cut once."

In part II, you learned that you need to read and understand the adopted codes relevant to your property and then look contextually at improvements around you, to discern if there is a discretionary element modifying the adopted codes.  This provides you a baseline on what can be done.

The next step is to understand who the stakeholders are.  These are typically abutting neighbors, long-standing community groups, anyone who holds an easement or deed restriction on your property, and the authorities having jurisdiction (AHJ) over any entitlements.

Real estate is reputed to be all about Location, Location, Location.  During the approvals process it is more like Neighbors, Neighbors, Neighbors (NNN).  And their first reaction to any change is likely to be No, No, No.  And you need to get to yes, yes, yes.

Your key task is to go and talk with your neighbors, propose the changes to the neighborhood, why they should support you, and why you are doing it now. 

The objective  is to get a letter of support from each of your abutting neighbors for your intended use. 

You will need conceptual level plans, elevations, and what the improvements will look like from their vantage point.  You are not selling a project, you are proposing this in the neighborhood and you want to understand their concerns.

Rinse and repeat with any community groups, other non-abutting but influential neighbors, non-governmental committees (historical, etc), and easement holders.  The objective here is to respond to concerns on your intended use before it shows up in the public arena. 

Caution:  too much community wrangling can make the intended use look like it was designed by a committee (which it was) rather than the voice of your architect. The goal is incorporation by your architect of contextually derived  ideas,  not design by committee.

Only after you gain neighborhood support for your intended use do you move forward.  Moving forward without this support is pissing into the wind.  Not to mention expensive.

Every once in a while I am exposed to something that recalibrates my view on my profession.  A book, a conversation, a performance that knocks me back to first principles, that I am in this game to make a difference, to leave this place better than I found it.  And that there is so much more to do...

I have been doing soapbox duty recently on what passes for planning at San Quentin.  This top down approach that has left me dumbfounded. No response to date from our elected officials about why the law proscribes such a use on this irreplaceable 275 acre bayfront property and what it would take to change the law.

Here is a talk by an amazing woman, a MacArthur Fellow, about creating sustainable communities--an amazingly inspiring use of ten minutes of your day. Watch this, and think about what is about to happen here. 

 Download the video here.

I warn you, it is a powerful presentation.  If public presenting is part of your life, you might also appreciate Guy Kawasaki's take on Majora Carter's performance,

"I would love it if my daughter would grow up to be a warrior like Majora."

As Majora said, "We have nothing to lose...and everything to gain."

...or fenestration, as my architect friends call it.  The primary function of a window is to provide a link to the outside.  This link needs a view of the ground and the horizon.  Windows offer the opportunity to frame a view, direct light, allow cross ventilation, and connect us with our location.

How do I get my head around windows? 

Look at the rough openings. In the Bay Area and Hawaii, my first cut for a total RO number is 25% of floor area.   Budgeting costs range from $80PSF of rough opening for mid-market solution to $275PSF for a completely custom mahogany window system  to $400PSF for a european import.

 Had one quote for a french cast bronze system that was $2400PSF, but that is another story.

Multi-point, pocketing, casement, awning, double-hung, triple-hung or fixed sashes?  Screens?  Depends on how you use the opening--view, ventilation, daylighting.

Laminated glass is great for soundproofing, and you don't have those anodized aluminum spacer bars visible in a double paned window.  Type of glass, low e, argon filled, etc--how much you use and where you use it is defined by your Title 24 calculation--this calculation determines how energy efficient your home is.

Final placing of windows needs to be done on-site--full scale model approach--with the rough frame of the building in place.  Mock up the frame of the window and move it around until it feels right.  Pay attention to the organization of the view and how the space inside relates to this.  Be careful about windows on a western exposure--they tend to heat up the house when you least need it.  Windows on a northern exposure are great for studio space.

Windows are a big part of your budget, but like the doors on your automobile, you use them a lot, and their mechanical function provides feedback on the quality of  construction.  They make a big difference in the delight and function you get from your home--so choose wisely.

I was the Owner's representative on the 2006 Decorator Showcase.  This event is a huge fundraiser for San Francisco's University High School, raising over $500,000 for their scholarship fund each year.

This extreme makeover came in on-time, on-budget, and showcased the work of 27 designers, drawn from a field of over 400.  Here is a list of tips and tricks I used in getting to this on-time, on-budget result:

Start with Good Bones.  The house had great bones(structure), a concrete foundation, and was built on rock.  Purrrrrrfect.
Optimize Back of House Space--there was almost 2,000SF of habitable space that was not being utilized for a contemporary program.  We changed that.  The wine cellar became a major draw to the ground floor.  The garage was relocated to the north of the home.  The hayloft became a carriage house.

Kitchen is the Heart of the Home--three rooms become one.  Homes today are about flow, about entertaining, and everyone ends up in the kitchen anyway, so why not make it large enough to hold all your friends?

Retreat to the Master Suite--complete redo of the Master Suite  to bring in flow, modern light, and stone (pearl onyx, in case you were wondering).

Port Daylight--Daylight is the new black...we extended the main stair to the top floor, breathing life into spaces that had historically been back of house space.  Presto, 2KSF of view space, off a dramatic stairhall.

Trust your Architect--the Voice of the architect was cool, San Francisco classicism, just what the home needed.  And the ability to get permits on-time didn't hurt, either.  You're the best, Dan!

Motivate your Builder-- Steve Stroub is a great builder who we knew was capable of A level work in San Francisco's best neighborhoods.  We set the bar high, and his firm exceeded it.

Your Next Three Milestones--  Critical path schedules were reviewed with the superintendent--everyone knew the next three milestones. They proceeded to beat them.  You rock, Jay

You Can't Let the Kids Down--particular to Showcase, this event raises over half a million dollars for scholarships to University High School.  Everyone knew that the kids were a major beneficiary of our blood, sweat and tears, and it kept us going.

Throw Momma Off the Train--we had a garage subcontractor who took the last two weeks of December off, a logic completely unencumbered by the milestones we had to hit.  He is (was?) a fixture in the Pacific Heights neighborhood and figured he had us.  Wrong.  He walked the plank, and an opportunity created for an enterprising trade contractor to fix it.

Parachute In--Front doors can be really expensive.  Or not.  We found a vendor who promised us he would deliver on time.  Excuses, excuses, excuses.  Amazing what sitting in the guy's shop until he coughs up the door will do to motivate a vendor.  Installed two days before Showcase opened

And did I mention the 27 great designers who came in after us and did an amazing job in three weeks?  Drop me a line if you are looking for a good interior designer--very rarely do I get to work with so many good ones--the talent here was inspiring.  I would love to hook you up with these talented professionals...

If you would like more information on the backstory--the Extreme Makeover of producing this asset--you can download it here.  It was the Wall Street Journal's House of the Week.

I admit I am a fanatic about schedules.  Not so much the full color, neatly cascading stuff that comes out of Microsoft Project, but a fanatic about wanting to know where the critical path is currently running, who is on the critical path, and whether they know it.

A schedule is not a cure-all.  It is a tool, but like a nicely balanced, 22 oz framing hammer, can be misused.  What problems can't a schedule solve?  Here is a list:

• Errors and Omissions in Construction Documents.
• Poor Communication of Project Requirements.
• Scope change cascades and ripples.
• Poor horizontal and vertical control.

Item one is an Architect responsibility.  Two and Three are the Owner's responsibility.  Four is owned by the builder.

Don't let this stop you from getting a good schedule--these problems affect the accuracy of your schedule and you need to be listening for symptoms.

Do you know where your Critical Path lies today?