How To Hold Specs April 11, 2001 Q: How do you hold specs? A: We have established an in-house list of approved manufacturers (for the most commonly specified fixture types) which our company will consider on projects. Our basis for selecting a particular product for the application is established by evaluating product quality/performance, representation and service, delivery and familiarity with the products. We will specify products on projects in the most efficient and fair manner we can. We will always try to maintain a competitive situation whenever possible by specifying at least two equal products (excluding some exceptions). We will also try to balance the schedule as much as possible so as not to give one manufacturer an unfair advantage. We ask that lighting reps and supply houses respect that specification. If their products are not listed, do not submit for approval. We try our best to be fair and will consider their products on another project. This will allow for all the approved manufacturers to be equally active in bidding our projects. It is often times impossible to establish the perfect fixture schedule, which will please everyone. If for some reason the reps or suppliers feel an unfair situation has occurred, we encourage them to let the project engineer know; we will either try to correct it or prevent it from happening on the next project. The Staff at Lang Associates, Inc. Wausau and Green Bay, WI A: Only a great amount of tenacity and the extra research involved to hold specs enable project to come in at- or under-budget without compromising the design. I have the results to be well worth the effort. A method I've fine tuned over the past 10 years recently resulted in savings of $134,000 on an $85,000 lighting installation. In fact, this approach to holding specs has paid for my firm's lighting design services on a number of projects. Basically, in order to write a competitive specification and not be overrun by other's packaging, you have to write the package yourself by building it into design specifications. Some jobs, because of their unique design requirements, cannot be successfully packaged. On those jobs, we rely on our relationships with manufacturers and manufacturer agencies to preserve our specifications. There have been times when we've been able to avoid extensive re-design and loss of design features by anticipating the "value engineering" numbers prior to the bid. For a recent project, we sat down with the contractor and evaluated the fixture costs along with the installation costs. My firm went back over every aspect of the project, down to recounting the fixtures, as if we were bidding it ourselves. We acquired cost data directly from the manufacturers, with numbers specific to our preferred design and our design alternates. We then negotiated special pricing for our clients prior to completing the fully documented five-name spec. The specification was created after evaluating the design implications of each packaging option and their associated cost implications in three versions of a custom spreadsheet. Any fixture alternates representatives could supply during the value-engineering process were solicited by us for evaluation. It is bringing the figures in writing to the table that enables us, as lighting designers, to work with contractors to save costs in ways that do not compromise the integrity of the project. We had both the architects' and the owners' full support in this process. While this eases the bid review process, it is not something that can be made up for in our fee for construction administration. This work was complete as an hourly additional service. Although the owner could not know it up front, the savings from authorizing this pre-bid cost analysis more than paid for our design fee on the project. In today's building market, the condensing of the design processes to match the shortened building cycles can leave a design team without all the information needed to make decisions. The bidding processes have a tendency to occur at times more in sync with financial forces than design phases. It's important to take an active role and understand what information the contractor will have to assemble the pricing and offer recommendations for bid formats that best inform the design team about the true cost implications. Cost evaluation processes are essential to lighting consultants for tightening the design, reducing overage and earning a reputation among architects, designers, contractors and suppliers for understanding the numbers. While understanding the numbers may seem basic, alternates and packages make it a truly complex issue. Each project will require a slightly different approach. Deborah Witte, ASID, CID, MIES Principal, Lighting by Design, San Francisco April/May 1999, Architectural Lighting Magazine