Monday, August 17, 2009

Who are these people, and what are they doing on my project?

(Note: I had a recent request regarding what's involved in each of the phases of a project. My first post on phases is here. What I've discussed so far may not cover all your questions, so feel free to ask more after reading that post.)

It's easy to imagine that architects do an entire building by themselves. After all, we rarely if ever deal with consultants in school, and no one really mentions them even in the mechanical and electrical/building systems classes you have to take. But no architect is an island, and we do a lot of systems coordination along with the design that we're actually allowed to do by training and by law.

On any project larger than a single-family home, you'll likely come into contact with a lot of different consultants. So what do these engineers do? Let's discuss the typical ones first.

Civil engineers. These consultants are different from landscape architects in that they deal in great part with keeping water away from the building and getting it off the site and into the ground or the city stormwater and waste water system (so they work a fair amount with the plumbing engineers). A good rule of thumb is that if it's more than five feet away from the building's exterior, civil is dealing with it. Civil engineers will help locate the building on the site after acquiring lots of legal drawings and surveys. amd they can help you get vehicular traffic on and off your site. Civil engineers work hand in hand with...

Landscape architects. Landscape architects work up close to the building as well as all over the site, and they deal with selecting planting and hard surface materials for the site. They design parking lots and drive lanes (sometimes with input from the civil engineer), and they design and figure out biking paths as well as sidewalks and walking paths to get people from their cars to the building. The planting materials they select have to work with the climate as well as the building's operator capacity--if a school has only one facility guy, and he has only one helper, they don't need a fancy design that is going to require lots of weeding, watering, and upkeep. However, a building on a college campus might be able to cope with that same design just fine. Landscape architects may also select and locate trees on the site to provide shade for people using the site as well as for the building itself. A shady tree growing by a window knocks the summer sun off and helps keep the building cool, which make the mechanical system have to work less, which is appreciated by the...

Mechanical and plumbing engineers. Some engineering firms have one person who handles both mechanical and plumbing, and some firms have separate people who handle mechanical and plumbing separately. Either way, these are the people who figure out the mechanical system, which includes the air handling units, chillers, boilers, duct work, fans, and so on. If it involves heating, cooling, moving, or filtering air, then mechanical engineers deal with it. Plumbing engineers deal with heating, cooling, and moving water around the building. They also deal with getting waste water and sewage out of the building, and they deal with getting water off of the building's roof and away from the building so that it doesn't affect the foundation or wash away the ground around the building. Plumbing engineers have to work with local municipalities to make sure that the city or county has enough water pressure in their public water supply to support the building you're designing, and they have to make sure that the city or county's stormwater and wastewater systems can handle all the toilets flushing and water pouring out of your roof drains and gutters. These engineers will also deal with gases, like natural gas or propane that powers equipment (like AHUs and boilers) as well as medical gases (like oxygen, medical air, nitrogen, and vacuum/suction, all found in a hospital). Finally, plumbing engineers will also select what kind of sinks, toilets, faucets, and the like are used in a building. Mechanical and plumbing consultants work almost constantly with...

Electrical engineers and lighting designers. Sometimes, the electrical engineer is also the person who helps you pick your light fixtures, but in some firms (and some projects, if they're really big) one electrical engineer figures out the lighting systems and another electrical engineer figures out the power systems, which provide power to all the equipment, electrical outlets, and light fixtures. The electrical engineer needs to know all the equipment going into a building so that s/he can make sure enough power is coming into the building to support it. They make sure that the panelboards and electrical equipment is there to handle the power coming and and route it to where it needs to go in the building and on the site (like to exterior lights in a parking lot or along sidewalks). Electrical engineers also have to make sure that there's enough power for lots of unseen but critical systems, like the fire alarm system, paging or intercom systems, or even emergency power systems (in important buildings like police stations, fire stations, and hospitals). All these engineers and the architect have to deal with...

Structural engineers. Oh yeah, this building has to stand up, doesn't it? Architects will often consult with a structural engineer on single-family homes to have someone make sure that the home will stand up, but a structural engineer has a very prime role in every building. S/he designs the structure for the building based on drawings that the architect provides, and s/he also can recommend a structural system (steel, heavy timber, cast-in-place concrete, precast concrete, etc.) based on the building shape, size, and type. The structural engineer also has to know where this building is going to be built so that s/he can design the structural connections for certain kinds of wind loads and seismic (earthquake) loads. By knowing what's going on each floor or area of a building and on its roof(s), s/he can design the floors, roofs, and structural members to hold up to certain live loads (people, carts, cars, moveable shelving) and dead loads (fixed shelving, stationary equipment, casework, some furniture). Some of those equipment loads are passed on to the design team by...

Equipment consultants. Some equipment consultants do anything that plugs into the wall and makes a whirring noise, and some specialize: medical equipment, laundry equipment, food service equipment, etc. These consultants are usually on larger, more complex projects or on projects that have special needs. The equipment consultant will work with the client to help them select equipment, or s/he may just help the client figure out what equipment is going where, and the s/he finds out information about each piece of equipment, such as size, weight, required clear space around the equipment, and what it needs in terms of power, plumbing, and heating or cooling. S/he passes that information onto the rest of the design team, who then accommodates each piece of equipment in their drawings. This equipment has to fit into rooms and next to casework and spaces that are also designed by...

Interior designers. Architects will draw floors, walls, and casework (cabinets), but it's just stuff until the interior designer gets involved. S/he will specify what kind of plastic laminate or solid surface or whatever material covers the countertops and casework fronts (and insides and undersides!) as well as what color and kind of paint or wallcovering goes where, what kind of flooring and in what patterns, etc. This sounds like a bunch of color-picking, but it goes beyond that. Interior designers are trained to know what's appropriate to use where. For example, a nice real cherry wood chair rail might be pretty in a small doctor's office, but in a larger clinic in a city, it will get beat up quickly because of the number of patients coming in, sitting down, and whacking their chairs against the rail. So, the interior designer will specify a thick plastic chair rail that looks like cherry wood instead. But what good is this nice looking building if it burns down? That's why many projects have...

Fire protection consultants. Every now and then, a plumbing engineer might design the sprinkler system, but usually this is done by a different consultant. More often than not, the firm who designs the sprinkler systems (based on drawings that architects and engineers provide for them) also install the sprinkler systems and work in tandem with the plumbing engineer to make sure that the building has enough water pressure, etc. to make the system function. Even if the plumbing engineer doesn't design the sprinkler system, s/he may want to review the fire protection consultant's shop/installation drawings. Never hurts to have one more pair of eyes on them.

Indeed, that one more pair of eyes for the entire project is you, the architect. When you receive drawings and updates from your engineers, you need to look at what they're doing. Does the mechanical engineer have a 48" deep duct main going down a hall with a 10'-0" ceiling? Does it actually fit in there, what with the beams in that areas being 24" deep (according to the structural engineer's drawings)? Are you able to hide the structural engineer's columns in your walls, or at least line up your walls with the columns so that you don't have columns standing in the way everywhere? Is the electrical engineer showing convenience outlets in the hallways so that the cleaning crew can run a vacuum cleaner in a reasonable manner? Your ceiling plans show recessed can lights in the waiting room; does the engineer/lighting designer's plan match? If not, why not? You also have to coordinate the engineers and consultants with each other. If a mechanical engineer is showing an air diffuser in the same ceiling space as the electrical engineer is showing a light fixture, they need to talk. Yes, the guys who install this stuff are going to figure something out, but one would presume that those people put their stuff in that one place in the ceiling because it was ideal. It's not just your job to make sure that everyone's stuff jives with yours, but it's also your job to make sure they're talking to each other. Sometimes you have to say, "Work it out, kids."

There are a myriad of other consultants--special equipment vendors, furniture consultants, art consultants, even feng shui consultants. These are the basic ones that you'll more than likely deal with on a regular basis.

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