Lots of good research comes from the real estate sector because they tend to be very sophisticated users of design services. This week's article on proactive design caught my attention because I’ve long held the value of a building is primarily established in the design phase. Being proactive about the structural system is central to this.
In the end, however, I think the article missed key opportunities to provide evidence of why it's important for clients to engage the services of a structural engineer as early in a project as possible. Take for instance the authors' statement:
“If the correct structural system is selected early on when concepts are still fluid, it forms the right bones for all that follows and inherently reduces costs due to its appropriateness and efficiency.”What makes it "inherent"? If I'm a critical thinker, I should ask myself if there aren't empirical ways to investigate this question. And what the authors gloss over as inherent I think actually represents a testable process which is predictable enough to save clients money. My hypothesis is that numbers exist which point to very specific reasons why the building design process is optimized when structure is addressed early. I actually just found the numbers in books at the University of Calgary library and on the internet. Had I written the article - the main thrust of which I agree with - I wouldn't have used the word "inherent" but rather more words instead. Ha!
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