Design Assist: More Than a Pre-Construction Chore

Constructing a new building, whether it’s a manufacturing facility or a new hospital, requires a lot of coordination, planning, and the understanding of that delays are inevitable.

Design Assist is the act of engaging a system expert early in the planning process to help mitigate these delays, prevent costly design errors, and ensure the smooth execution of the hospital construction project. 

With that said, the construction process typically occurs in four main phases, sometimes named differently but consistently sequential like this: 

Phase 1: Pre-Design

The pre-design phase of a project is the deliberation and conceptualization that takes place before designs are drafted e.g. (i.e., determining the number of tube system stations needed). Ideally, Design Assist services begin here. 

Phase 2: Drafting-and-Design 

This is when the architect and owners collaborate to create a building plan. This includes both:  

- Schematic Design: the initial design phase.   

- Design Development: when the design process has begun and is in process.  

Phase 3: Bid 

Once the design is hashed out, the general contractor can start receiving bids.  

Phase 4: Construction Document

This is when the general contractor and owner collaborate to begin making the design a reality.  

Understanding the design process and bringing experts on board early on can significantly minimize the risk of costly holdups now and years down the line.  

The ideas are similar. In many cases, the pre-selected construction manager or general contractor will offer their expertise, billed as “pre-construction services,” where they’ll give insights in terms of draft plans, constructability, material costs, estimating, labor, systems, etc.

Trade subcontractors, or system experts, generally aren’t included in this process so it can lack the unique expertise that makes design assist a smart move — especially when dealing with sophisticated, computerized, high-traffic tube systems like ours.

By electing to go through with Design Assist, experts are engaged far earlier and more extensively in the design process resulting in a far better outcome.

What Happens if a Design has Already Been Started?

If a licensed professional designer has begun drafting a design, this would mean the project has entered the “design development” stage — the latter of the drafting-and-design phase. Design Assist services are still possible and encouraged during this stage, though more changes may be required.

In this stage, we actively engage ongoing hospital construction projects by providing design specifications for station locations, above ceiling equipment, general pipe routings, riser points, and general infrastructure in new and existing hospital construction.

This can also include performance evaluations and associated simulation reports, specification development, and technology considerations (i.e., RFID, WhoTube, etc.).

In many instances, when design origination — or design modification during construction — is handed off to the general contractor, that’s referred to as “design delegation”.

Since the general contractor may assume added liability by deciding on the final design or they don’t have experience working with a certain system, they may seek a qualified design professional or subcontracted expert to help them design and construct what the client is looking for.

In any case, the key defining aspect of “design delegation” is that the general contractor has control over the final design, not a licensed design professional.