The past few years have rattled industries of all kinds, where businesses have been forced to adapt and overcome challenges to maintain their position in the market and stay competitive. We at FSGC believe that adding value to our trade partners and clients is the greatest tool in our arsenal, which in turn helps support the delivery of projects within budget and on time.
In today’s economy, it’s typical for construction projects to be over budget, and material lead times extend build schedules. These common challenges have many builders looking for a way to improve schedules and lower costs, leading them down the value engineering path.
The great news is that value engineering is an excellent path to finding lower costs and improved schedules; the bad news is that to obtain the greatest value for owners, value engineering needs to be applied early in the Planning & Design phase of the construction process, not in the Construction Plans. It is not wrong to look at value engineering solutions, but the closer the process is to the Schematic Design stage, the better potential value the owner will see.
Early Engagement
Our team at Foundation Specialties Geostructural Construction (FSGC) is experienced in many geostructural techniques and, more importantly, is able to leverage our extensive knowledge and experience in structural and geotechnical engineering to provide some excellent value engineering solutions. Our greatest value added is that we can help guide our clients on best practices and support the design phases, which will help support aggressive delivery schedules and budget constraints.
Below are some examples of projects where FSGC partners with the clients and collaborates on all stages of the build to ensure value-engineered solutions:
- After reviewing the Geotechnical report, FSGC recommended a solution that provided a savings of over $100,000 on the foundations in the renovation of a Central Arkansas High School meeting room and improved the schedule by 50%
- Working with the structural EOR, the FSGC solution led to a savings of over $200,000 on the foundations of a two-story addition for a Technical College in Oklahoma City through the use of a permanent shotcrete wall with soil anchors.
- Working with the owner, FSGC’s solution enabled a savings of over $150,000 on a wall stabilization project for an industrial facility in Wichita, KS, and improved the schedule by 55%.
The team at FSGC enjoys the opportunity to engage early on with structural engineers, geotechnical engineers, owners, and general contractors during the design phases to find creative value-engineered solutions in foundation designs, underpinning, and support of excavation.
Contact Us & Learn More
If your organization would like to learn more about how we can add further value or any other topic, reach out, and we’ll schedule a technical briefing. We now offer technical training via lunch & learn morning briefs and seminars in the afternoon. If we can help educate and train your engineers and project designers, we may give them insights into our “world” and have them view engineering via a different lens. This may help support the well-designed project, and the scope remains clear and concise.
Our briefings are approximately 45-60 minutes in length (depending on the number of questions) and can be held:
- Morning (“Breakfast Briefings”)
- Lunch (“Lunch-n-Learn”)
- Late afternoon (“Tech Talks”).