As we stated in our previous post, Do It Together Development: A Team-Based Approach, the value of having your full team in place, working in tandem, at the very beginning of the project can be immense. It’s the first tenet of DIT Development, build your team early. Assembling like-minded people who are experts in their field, and have worked together before means fewer mistakes, which means less time and money spent correcting those mistakes. It also ensures that the end result will meet or exceed a level of quality that your brand has come to expect.
So let’s dig into the second tenet of DIT Development, leverage your team’s talents.
But, what makes up a successful development team? And, how best to leverage their individual talents in a collaborative setting?
Multiple Vantage Points
“Many hands make light work,” right? Well, more sets of eyes looking at a particular set of plans, more brain power being used to solve a problem or overcome an obstacle makes not only light work, it makes right work.
And, it makes it happen much more quickly.
There are many moving parts on any construction project, and many things can easily go overlooked. The likelihood of that happening when you are collaborating from an early stage, though, reduces drastically.
When more people are involved for longer, potential problems, omissions, conflicts, etc. are exposed earlier. This allows the team more time to identify those issues and agree on a resolution before they have the chance to become bigger problems that cost you precious time and money. When you are finally ready to break ground, large swaths of uncertainty will have already been worked out, minimizing rework and redesign.
Creative Solutions
When you bring together professionals who are experts in all facets of construction, the information sharing that occurs inevitably breeds creative solutions that might not have been introduced otherwise. These people bring to the table years and years of work across a number of different types of construction projects.
For instance, say that the land you are building on is an odd shape. Perhaps the land is fine, but there might be logistical issues that make accessing the site more difficult. Or, another common issue is developing in a densely-populated urban area and you don’t have room for laydown, which is an area to stage materials.
The combined experience of a team of experts lends itself nicely to developing creative solutions to these issues while there is still time to make low-cost, low-risk adjustments to your project.
Concurrent Operations
Once your team has exposed the problems/issues and come up with solutions for your project schedule, a great way to save time and money is to have them execute on their respective phases of the project concurrently, whenever possible. Traditionally, a project rolls out sequentially, but we have found that there are always opportunities for multiple aspects of a project to be running at once.
This is particularly helpful when it comes to obtaining permits and other municipal approvals. These often take months to process after they have been applied for. Those months can be wisely spent planning or executing other aspects of the project, ultimately shaving time and, in turn, cost.
Leveraging Partners Often Saves More than it Costs
Our office is highly-experienced and skilled in building properties and buildings that people live in (amongst others). A first-time or novice developer simply does not have the same acumen we have, and likely is not privy to some of the tips and tricks that we are, in terms of opportunities to save time and money.
In our experience, our clients save 2-3x the amount of the fee that we charge, just by the ideas that our team brings to the table.
Trust
Of course, none of the above matters unless we can assemble a team of people that we trust. As such, we typically like to bring the same people on whenever possible. Over time, a group that has worked with each other, and has worked with us before, develops a shorthand. This streamlines the process immensely and, as is the case with everything we aim to do, reduces time and cost.
Again, we believe that assembling the proper team, leveraging its members’ unique abilities, and inspiring collaboration between them, is crucial to opening any construction project on time, on budget, or better. But that always begins in the same place: with you, the developer.
This is the second article in a series on the four tenets of Do It Together Development. We have discussed the importance of assembling a team early, and now how to leverage that team effectively. Stay with us as we dive into the remaining two tenets: protecting your time, and managing your project proactively.
