Pre-Construction: Making a List & Checking It Twice
Before any construction team can get down to business, they’ve got to go through pre-construction, or what the cool kids call “pre-con.” But what exactly is this preliminary phase, and why is it so important?
Pre-con involves making a list and checking it twice. Essentially, it encompasses everything that goes on before construction actually starts — think managing budgets, looking after owners’ interests, generating bids, working with architects and managing deadlines
This is what the CMSWillowbrook team does every single day, so we’re well-versed in how to provide a favorable return on investment for our clients. During pre-con, we:
Provide value analysis and engineering to see if we can save clients money in any way, such as using alternative materials. We act as a teammate to the design team and an advocate for our client.
Dive down into the trade specifics and scope of work prior to the bidding process to understand how trade contractors — and by extension, their material suppliers — see and understand the scope they’re bidding on. We finish this process before the final bid documents are completed and before the bids are advertised. This level of expertise and detail reduces risk and duplicated scope coverage, which equates to lower bids.
Review long-lead items and bid the project in phases. This helps expedite and protect the construction schedule.
Pre-con takes a lot of time, expertise, lessons learned, and hard work, but the success of any construction project relies heavily on pre-planning! It’s as simple as “plan the work, then work the plan.”
Cristy Callins is vice president of pre-construction services at CMSWillowbrook.