Episode 5 | Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Transcript
00:00:05 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Welcome to Vision Driven with Resin Architecture, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of architecture, development, and construction.
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00:00:51 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Well, we'll get started here. I'm excited to have you here. This is Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction. His specialty is actually in the pre-construction world. That's all he does as far as I know, all day long, probably more than 40 hours a week. Do you want to give a brief overview of Headwaters? Just.
00:01:15 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Headwaters Construction is a commercial general contractor from eastern Idaho, been in business going on, I think 21 years and we specialize in all sorts of commercial projects: industrial, medical, multifamily, office - those kind of things. But we've really put a big focus on - kind of differentiating ourselves - through preconstruction services. We actually years back even changed the name of all the people we called estimators at one time. We've changed the titling to pre-construction manager to more accurately represent the kind of work that they do and the services they provide.
00:02:00 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Give me a little bit of your background in the industry. What brought you to it? What do you love about it?
00:02:10 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Honestly, I got close to college and I just had no idea what I wanted to study, but I had done construction. I wouldn't say my whole life, but my grandpa had a general contracting firm. A lot of my uncles and cousins - we all kind of worked at the company.
00:02:27 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And I knew I really liked it, and there was some point when I started to kind of show some aptitude toward construction. So when I got into college, initially I thought it was dental school or something. And then that got a little overwhelming. So I went into I I met with some advisors and got into construction management and kind of the rest is history.
00:02:49 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I grew up with kind of small commercial and residential experience and so all through school I did internships trying to really gain some more large commercial experience and so I did that all through college and eventually kind of fell into the pre-construction side of the business.
00:03:08 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
And what exactly does pre-construction manager do, like if you were to describe your role. 00:03:12 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Well, I mean at its most core element, the services that I'm focused on providing is 1. cost information. I mean, you know, years ago it probably would have been a little bit more of a narrow role.
00:03:33 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
But with a lot of the changes in the way that we procure work in the industry today, that that role includes not only budgeting and cost estimating, but it also includes meeting very early with the client and talking about constructability and scheduling and helping with design review with the architectural team and working as a partner with the architectural team to try to make sure that the design not only looks good, but is buildable and as efficient as possible. We provide services for kind of all aspects of everything happening during design and then bringing that cost component in as.
00:04:11 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
One of the things that I know that I've used you guys for is for ballpark [figures,] like where does a certain type of... You know, I'll do like a short explanation of something and say, hey, this is a medical office building. It's about this many square feet. These are the types of things that are in there. And then ballpark, what do you think that's going to cost? And then we try to use that to help our clients before they become your clients, and sometimes you know they are the same at the same time.
00:04:44 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
There's more value there, but you know at least an initial value that we've seen is, hey, like we need to right size this, we need to cut down just a little bit before we we get too far, before we get into too much detail.
00:04:58 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Those numbers are changing all the time, and especially the last few years have probably been a roller coaster for you guys.
00:05:04 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
It's been hard for everyone in the industry, actually. That's a good point. I mean, you mentioned an early conceptual look at a project and we approach projects differently depending on what stage we're in. At the most conceptual level. If it's just a kind of a napkin sketch and some facts and figures about the size and use of the building.
00:05:29 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We usually will approach it at a much simpler level, looking at historical data and similar projects and and we track all of our historical data pretty well. So we can do that. And then as we progress with design, obviously you get more information through the design process and then you need to couple that with updated numbers to make sure that we're still tracking in the direction we expected them to. There're usually multiple updates of the budget as we get more detail and more information.
00:05:56 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
I know one project that I worked with you on was a simple townhome design. One of the things that you guys were helping us with was just honing in on materials where it's like, hey, if you use this material, it's like a next year finish.
00:06:12 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Or if you use these trims, there's a cost associated with that. We can probably get this a very similar look, but using a different material, You guys have the experience to be able to say if you do this material, versus this material, you might have, you know, maybe there's a maintenance component here or maybe there's not and it's like, well, we spend an extra buck a square foot on just the material which overall might be really insignificant. It might be $1,000 bucks if that's how much material there is, but it's going to result in not having all that maintenance that would have been over $1,000 bucks a year for a few years or something like that.
00:07:00 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Yeah, I think that's part of it is. Whether it's material selections, a lot of times cost information is very difficult to acquire. You can't Google how much a certain exterior metal panel costs. I mean, you could find a supplier that might tell you how much they charge and then they would sell that to some sort of a wholesaler or maybe a subcontractor. But then they've got to have all their equipment costs, their installation, all these things. So by the time you get to a real number, oftentimes it's not what you expected based on your Google search. And so that's one thing that we try to be savvy on is be up to date with a lot of different material types - not just the cost to purchase the materials, but the installed prices and because it really makes a big difference on wear and tear on the building. What kind of maintenance cost is this going to have for me? How much more does that mean up front? There might even just be three or four solutions that are similar but could be less in cost. And so yeah, that's actually one of the things that is pretty key in in the process, especially in early design, is trying to flag maybe some of those finishes that don't fit within the budget or maybe meet the owner's intent.
00:08:18 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Whether that's long-term durability, if they want the building for 70-80 years to last, we need to be thinking that direction and but still be cost conscious.
00:08:31 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
When do you feel like the right time for an owner to talk to somebody like you is? 00:08:38 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Well, as early as you can is good. Sometimes if you get far enough down the road and then you kind of feel like man, we really need some input from somebody that's in the field... It's a value at any point I think. But I think you can really harness the benefits of it if you start really early on.
00:08:59 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I would say if I peel back and kind of take off my general contractor goggles and I say I'm going to put myself in the shoes of maybe someone who's a newer developer or a newer owner of a certain type of project, it actually probably is a little bit scary to make a commitment like that early on.
00:09:24 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And I tell you that it is really important to probably meet with - if you have a few people in mind - meet with all of them and talk about what they do and how they contract with you.
00:09:33 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Because you’ve got to be able to trust the people that you're working with. If they're offering you pre - construction services and hopefully they even build it for you once you're to a certain milestone in your project. If you can't trust them that they're being a fiduciary for you and a steward for your project, then that makes the whole thing - you're always second guessing whether you're going on the right path.
00:09:55 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And so I would say getting to know those who your options are and who you feel strongly about working with. But trust is pretty important in the process because it really is a different approach. You really have a lot of trust between the architect and the contractor and the owner and any other consultants involved that they have your best interest in mind as an owner.
00:10:16 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
I would share very similar sentiments in terms of if that trust isn't there . A lot of times we'll do what's called concept type work, maybe take something through schematic design, and we'll do that all on an hourly basis.
00:10:39 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
If we don't know the owner, this is a good way for us to get to know them and them to get to know us. And a lot of times, it's like here's a great stopping point. If you want to go somewhere else or if we want you to go somewhere else then this is a good spot to stop. In a similar way I feel like pre-construction - you never want somebody to move on, but if this isn't going to work if you figure out that those dynamics - that trust - isn't really there then...
00:11:10 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
You know, you and I steward a lot of finance for a client, whether that's going to be successful or not. And so we want to always try to make sure everybody's taken care of.
00:11:23 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think at the end of the day, like we, we kind of have a similar arrangement. Most of the time we don't actually charge for our services upfront.
00:11:35 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture On the pre-construction side.
00:11:36 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I've got several projects even right now that have been I've been working on pre-construction services for well over a year.
00:11:48 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And we're just getting to where we're starting construction now. And normally we'll have a certain fee that's agreed upon upfront that we would charge for the upfront services.
00:12:03 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We also leave the option that if for whatever reason the project is over the owners budget and every our best attempts have been made to try to design and consult to get them to where their budget is and if they're just not feeling good about the numbers, they could at that point say we're going to stop right now and we would at that point ask we would collect our fee for the services we provide.
00:12:28 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
But normally, when we're done with the pre-construction process, at the time we roll into construction, we would just roll our fees over into the overall construction estimate so that they can kind of punt those costs down into their projects. So they get a in some cases a year's worth of services and it's really it's a pretty good bang for your buck, especially when it's rolled into your overall construction project.
00:12:48 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And it actually doesn't even cover our real cost to do it. It's almost like a token, kind of. It's mostly to protect us a little bit if we get down the certain road and we spend a lot of time there's at least some compensation for the effort. But normally if it does roll into construction, it's a pretty good bargain for the client because they really save a lot of money in the end and get a product that they're really - hopefully is exactly what they wanted.
00:13:16 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
We mentioned this a little bit, but in terms of today's volatility in the market, how do you guys handle that? How do you stay on top of that?
00:13:33 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We do quite a few different things. I would tell you that anybody who tells you that they just have it figured out is probably not giving you a full story because there's a significant amount of uncertainty that we experienced over the last few years. It is getting much better. There was a time when you could budget something and be within 1 or 2%.
00:13:53 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
It was just consistent because you had really good reliable historical data and cost information. That got really hard during the last few years. Some things that we did do was 1. we would constantly try to be talking to subcontractors to get updates and regular information of where the market was going.
00:14:15 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Sometimes those are a little delayed because it takes a minute for those to actually hit, you know, if that makes sense.
00:14:23 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Right. The subcontractor didn't go out and buy a bunch of lumber yesterday. It's been a month and all of a sudden it's like, oh last time I bought it was this.
00:14:28 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Exactly. They bought it last week, but ours is for a project that starts in four months and so sometimes you just don't know. So what we would try to do is...
00:14:43 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We would try to carry some escalation contingency and we would be open book, of course with the client to say so. It was kind of a shared guess in some way. [Like] saying here's where we think the market's going in this trade. I think we're comfortable with the cost here, but we may want to have a hedge a little bit for the future for these two trades where we're seeing some increases and this is how much we want to earmark for that.
00:15:06 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We would do that, and I would say even with our best efforts, there were still some challenges.
00:15:11 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We've appreciated our clients that have been understanding with how the market’s been.
00:15:20 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I think if you do it the right way, you can mitigate a lot of the challenges.
00:15:25 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
I read a report recently that they're expecting and who knows - but they're expecting at least material to stay about the same for the rest of this year. But where do you see labor going? Labor costs?
00:15:41 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I don't think it's going to change a whole lot. That’s my prediction. I'm not a guru with labor costs.
00:15:47 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
But I mean it, it seems to make sense. We have had a little bit of a slowing in the market across the board. That's in residential and commercial. Now there are some sectors that are still full steam ahead and there's a lot of projects that have been backlogged that are still under construction. But my prediction: there's going to be a fair amount of projects that are finishing up and not as many - not at the same rate of projects starting up.
00:16:14 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And I do think that there will be some laborers that might have to look for work a little more than they had before. There was a time when you couldn't hang on to your laborers because there was always someone willing to pay a little bit more somewhere else. And I think that's simmered down a lot. And material costs have definitely become more predictable back to probably what I would say are normal rates of increase. And so yeah, things have steadied.
00:16:43 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
In fact, I'd say over the last 6 to 8 weeks we've seen a lot more predictability with numbers and no more are we chasing this kind of exponential climb. We've really just become more predictable and in fact seen some decreases in overall cost for projects in the last little bit. I feel like we're maybe through the thick of the challenges we were all facing.
00:17:07 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Do you have any good examples of times where you've been like, hey we saved the client, you know, some real money here based on some of the recommendations or some of the techniques that you guys use?
00:17:19 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Oh yeah, I'm just thinking of one that we're just about to start construction on. 00:17:25 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
It was a project in Utah. The budget initially was I want to say high $30 million range like $38-39 million and we told them based on their conceptual level we knew where the numbers were and we told them there's just no way you're going to hit your budget. They didn't like that news really. But they said OK, what do we need to do? And so we started with some big things.
00:17:50 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
They took a level off their parking garage and expanded the footprint. We looked at some materiality on their exteriors and did a significant reduction of some types of materials and replaced it with less expensive materials.
00:18:03 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We looked at everything from their building structure. How are they doing their floor systems versus how are they doing their stair and elevator cores? A lot of different things. We looked at early on and I think we've been, I've probably got 15 budget updates on this project where we've made an approach early on and set a goal of a certain amount of money to save, and then we'd update the design and tweak it again and just kept tweaking it and the good news is we just finished up getting all the numbers in. We felt really good to know that all of our recommendations were correct and we're now tracking several $100,000 below the budget. A great feeling.
00:18:49 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Sorry. So from 38 million down to? Is that OK to share? 00:18:51 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction Their anticipated budget early on was, like I said, high 30’s. 00:19:00 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We started with them, though. We told them you're probably going to be high 40s with your design. So then after conceptual design adjustments, I think we got into the low $40 million range, $43,000,000.
And then just over the course of DD's and CD level documents, we've now adjusted these down.
00:19:20 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And we landed on a budget of $39,900,000 before right before we went out to bid. All of our subcontractors and I was crossing my fingers that we were going to hit where we needed to and like I said, we came in several $100,000 below that. So yeah, I mean that's just one example. It happens all the time though. I mean it's amazing.
00:19:40 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
If you know what the client want[s], and if you know what they're willing to pay and what they can afford to do, if you work well, if you have a good architecture team and good pre-construction services from the general contractor, you can really get them what they want and usually you can get a job off the ground.
00:20:00 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
We have some client clients with unrealistic expectations probably that just aren't anywhere where the market's at. You can't do a lot for that. But generally speaking, if they're within a reasonable realm, you know we can really create a win-win.
00:20:29 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
What's a common mistake that you've seen a new owner that hasn't ever built before do and what would you recommend to mitigate that?
00:20:51 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
This isn't so much of a plug for me as it is for maybe you, but I think one of the biggest mistakes we see or maybe a short sighted move we see is someone who may be an inexperienced developer or builder who maybe hasn't done a lot of it, undervalues good design and good collaboration up front.
00:21:21 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I think a lot of times, you know, you might get for example no architect involved, and they're kind of hoping that they can just kind of put together a concept with some help from a friend who does some design work or something and then work with a general contractor and a lot of times there's just too many code implications and design kind of errors that kind of trail into that, that my first thought is just really get a good architect on your projects and take some time to not just get bids from a few architects, but actually look at what they're providing you. Just cause someone's number might be
$20,000 more for architecture - it just takes 1 issue in the field of something that wasn't considered or wasn't thought about or well planned, and you'll lose that money or make up that money depending on what you do really easily.
00:22:16 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
You rip out a wall and retile and move some plumbing because s omething wasn't right. 00:22:19 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah.
00:22:22 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
That's from, like an ADA standpoint, which is, I feel like the biggest consideration, but I've heard of things like this even up in like high end custom homes in Jackson where it's like I didn't think it was going to look like that.
00:22:38 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
And they're like, yeah, remove it and do it again. And it's like, yeah, what would that have cost just to do it right the first time? If you just had some visualization software or something?
00:22:51 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Yeah. So it comes down... I think there's a lot of ground that a good architect will cover that really, with some good collaboration. I mean I can just think of countless examples of times where something was just completely overlooked or not coordinated that it can cost a lot in the field. You know, we try to catch as much of that - that's one of the services that you get when you involve someone that doing pre - construction services is we try to vet you know the design and if we see deficiencies we'll call them out.
00:23:24 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
At some point, there's only so far we can go. We're not architects, but really don't undervalue architecture. You know, I've seen a recent project in the not too distant past where they went with I guess the cheapest route they could get for their design.
00:23:45 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Because it was an inexperienced shop, it ended up taking about 8-9 months longer to just design the project, and even then it probably was not quite where it needed to be. And by the time that it was bid out, I mean the market just kept climbing and they probably had $2 or $3,000,000 of increases just from the market.
00:24:01 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
And they were looking at maybe a difference of $15,000 in architecture fees up front and some you know, an architecture firm with a little more horsepower and experience probably could have got them to the race a little quicker.
00:24:13 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
There's a lot to think about, but don't undervalue design, I would say and don't be scared to break the mold and use like a pre-construction service as part of your process too. There's a lot of value that contractors can bring in your project if you include them up front. Some people are a little scared to do that because it's like well I want to just get it designed and then I want to bid it and just get the very best price.
00:24:38 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
If you always go with the lowest contractor though, it it's similar where you know that's where I feel like I've seen issues as well, you know, especially when it's like, OK you've got three or four contractors that bid it and you're like, I like all of these. And then there's one outlier that's the bottom and it's like everybody else is really tight on their number. And then there's the outlier and it's like don't do that.
You're just setting yourself up for failure there. 00:25:05 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I'd say that's probably my first recommendation, honestly, is just good architecture, good design. And you know, the bigger the job, probably the more experienced the team needs to be, the more challenging the project is.
00:25:19 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
One of the things that I would add to that too is I hate it when a project goes out to bid and then they're like, oh, the numbers came in too high. And so then it's like, OK, now there's this value engineering exercise. That's still going to cost you more money because we've delivered what you've asked for.
00:25:41 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
And I don't actually enjoy doing value engineering. I'd rather do it along the way. Where it's like now the project feels like it's dragging because you're trying to make all these changes. And those changes can really kind of just blow up, right. By pulling in a contractor that you're like let's get it to a certain point, even if it is a concept phase. Let's go ahead and take it to that point and then bring somebody in that we
are like, hey let's go ahead and get this value out right now so that we're not doing a value engineering exercise later.
00:26:20 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
So like even if they decide, hey, we're going to have to pay this fee instead of rolling it into the project later on I think they're still saving money.
00:26:31 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
That's totally true. That project example I gave a few minutes ago about coming down from this mid $40 million number down into where it needed to be. That job I think the first time I looked at the project I probably had 50 or 60 value engineering or cost saving recommendations. The architecture team and the ownership group and us we all met together. We discussed all of those options. Some of them they truthfully wanted to hang on to because it was meaningful for them as an end user.
00:27:05 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
But a lot of them everyone just got behind the ideas and we implemented them and updated the numbers accordingly and then the next go around, you know, as more design was happening, we would go through the exercise again. We probably did a VE exercise thre e or four different times.
00:27:24 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Each one of those was new ideas of things that were kind of taking shape as it went along. But the last time that we went through the drawings, we were down to one or two ideas because ultimately we had solved all those problems during the design and didn't have to redesign the building at the end when we weren't hitting budget. We just did it as we went. And we made sure we got to the budget.
00:27:44 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
When the VE is happening along the path, it's a lot easier to change the drawings when they're 10 percent, 20%, you can make really big changes really easily. But when they're at 90% and you start making really big changes, it's not good for anybody.
00:28:02 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Once the architects detailed out all the stair riser and tread details and windowsill and head and jam details, and then you got to redo them again for all new, that's where it's problematic right.
00:28:12 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
What's one of the biggest changes that you've seen in the industry over the past few years (10 years or whatever) that you feel has been good and/or bad.
00:28:26 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Yeah, I think that's a good question. I would say I'm going to even stretch that maybe to 15 years, but There was just a time there, you know, there's always been different delivery methods. I'm going to use that term. It's not really a well known term maybe for a layperson or whatever. But in the industry those are kind of your method to procure a project or your method for contracting.
00:28:53 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture Just throw out a couple of examples.
00:29:04 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
So for example the most traditional process you know maybe in the last 30-40 years is design-bid-build. An owner hires an architect and then they work with the architect kind of in a vacuum, if you will. They design the whole project out with no input from any other outside sources, and then when it's done they send that out to bid to four or five general contractors, who would then bid the project. So that's called design-bid-build. For quite some time now we've been doing a project called Design-Build, which is a kind of a totally different concept. The owner basically has a concept or a basis of design or an idea for their building and they solicit multiple design builders. Now a design build team would usually consist of a general contractor and an architect and other consultants. They would be their own entity and maybe the general contractor would hire the architect in that case. They would design a project that they think meets the owner's needs and then they would go build it for them.
00:30:08 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
So that's design-build. I'd say one that's become much more common, especially in the Western United States - it's used everywhere - is a process called CM at risk or CM/GC, which that delivery method involves more of what we've been discussing in our meeting today, which is the owner hires an architect, and they also hire a contractor at the same time. That contractor provides construction management and pre-construction services up front as a team with the architect.
00:30:39 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
Then once you get through the design process that CM/GC would bid that to their subcontractors and go build it. So they're the kind of a manager during pre-construction and then they're the builder during construction. And I would say you know in the Western United States at least that's probably the biggest shift.
00:30:59 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I would say 80% of projects or more probably 90% even 15 years ago would have been design-bid-build. It's just a whole set of documents. They're completely designed and they just get bid out now. There is probably a place for that still under certain circumstance s.
00:31:14 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
It's not all bad. There's some lower upfront costs sometimes, depending on the circumstances, but oftentimes the back end costs can be a lot more because there hasn't been collaboration. So that's probably the biggest shift. That's a long answer to say there's just been a lot more contractor involvement up front than there ever used to be.
00:31:34 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
There are a lot of contractors that are set up to perform in that way and provide those services. It's not all of them though. But you know our company, for example, that's just what we specialize in is to provide that kind of upfront service and it's a big piece of what we do.
00:31:56 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Awesome. It's been kind of an interesting shift because I honestly started my career about 15 years ago and that was the method. And now especially maybe it's because I was in California. And so it was like, hey, you're in this big market and so there were plenty of things to bid out and you know there's, I guess there's been some other things that have developed that have maybe created this situation. But you know, back then (2011) building you could probably find a builder if you wanted a project in the next couple weeks, you'd probably be able to find a builder that's like, yeah, I'm ready.
00:32:37 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Today and in the last few years, it hasn't really been like that. Now you've got to get on our books. Talk to us [contractors], but don't talk to us three weeks before you want to start. You've got to talk to us months and months, maybe even a year out before, so that we can get you taken care of in the right way. That communication piece up front has become more important.
00:33:00 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
And I think with that maybe then also the value of, oh, well, if I talk to them sooner then they can actually also assist in these other things that that they really specialize in.
00:33:14 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
This is a question that I ask everybody. What is the one piece of advice that you wish that your clients knew before they started a project? What's the one thing that you would tell somebody that's saying, hey, I'm considering purchasing this piece of land for this purpose.
00:33:36 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
It's a little bit of a hard question. It almost would have been my comment about an architect actually. But if I'm thinking of maybe something else that that comes to mind.
00:33:46 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
I think maybe being open to adjusting expectations would be some feedback I'd give . I think that - I mean, I can't tell you how many times over the years I've heard comments like well, my brother-in-law is a plumber and he says that number is just way too high or you know I'm pretty handy and I know how I can go get materials at Home Depot and whatever. I'm not trying to downplay you know industry and some self performance. What I'm trying to say is especially on challenging sophisticated projects, you really want good people building your projects. You really want people that really understand it. And I think sometimes it's a little bit shocking for people when they really start getting into it.
00:34:35 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
They're like oh so I'm just talking to the architect for the first time today and it's May and I want to be building by August. I think sometimes you’ve just got to adjust expectations to say, well, if I want to do this the right way sometimes it just takes time to get it right. You need the proper amount of time to design it, and you need some input to make sure that your costs are in check. I think sometimes people just make the mistake of maybe without a lot of homework from the people that would actually build the job they kind of have a preconceived idea of the cost and the schedule. Then it's kind of eye
opening. And I think the more experienced our clients are, the more we see them come in with some really realistic expectations of timelines and how the process happens.
00:35:31 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
It kind of makes you probably more appreciative of good architects and good builders that can guide you through the process because it is a significant amount of work. But if it's done well, the client really gets a product that they're happy with and there shouldn't be a lot of surprises because they've been provided this service up front.
00:35:50 Brennon Baker with Headwaters Construction
That when they get the finish line, they're like, yeah, this is this is what I was prepped and ready to get. And this is what I wanted.
00:35:58 Greg Croft with Resin Architecture
Awesome. Well, I really appreciate your time today and thank you. And that wraps up another enlightening episode of Vision Driven. We hope you enjoyed our conversation and gained valuable insights into the world of architecture, development, and construction. And don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback helps us grow and improve our content and it also helps others discover the podcast.
00:36:20 Jamee Moulton with Resin Architecture
If you have any questions, suggestions for future topics, or if there's a specific guest you'd like us to feature, please reach out to us through our website, resinarchitecture.com, or connect with us on social media @ResinArchitecture. We value your input and would love to hear from you.
