Building Evaluation & Site Selection
Determining early on if a property can support present and future needs of a client's operations is of paramount importance. OMC works diligently with real estate brokers, facility staff, owners representatives and consultants to help with building evaluation and site selection. By providing detailed budgets for specific properties our clients are not only well informed, but have the upper hand prior to lease negotiations. During lease negotiations, real estate brokers and architects frequently ask OMC to review the work letter and provide feedback regarding all construction related items. At OMC, we believe that bringing us on early, does not only save tremendous amounts of time and money, it also helps our clients capitalize on opportunities.
Preconstruction & Estimating
In preconstruction, our goal is to provide our clients with a defined basis to make an informed decision. Our intense preconstruction process takes out many of the unknowns of a project and reduces risks for our clients. We do not believe in simple square footage budgets which have become the norm in our industry. At OMC we believe that putting in the extra effort upfront by performing site walks, involving our subcontractors, and collaborating with the team, we can provide a detailed project specific budget within a 3-5% variance of the actual costs. The clients we work with like to evaluate the different scenarios upfront and require a defined path to construct the project prior to funding approval. When a client has a vision which is beyond their budget parameters, we work with the team to find alternate materials to meet the budget without sacrificing the design intent or the functions they must satisfy.
Once a budget is approved, OMC will put together an RFP with project specific bid instructions and send the project out to bid to at least four prequalified subcontractors in each trade. Once bids are received, OMC will review them in detail for completeness and compare them to the quantity surveys prepared by our estimating staff to ensure the bids reflect a thorough understanding of the project documents and requirements. This type of detail ensures zero change orders for the approved scope of work.
Schedules & Procurement
In building our schedules early on, we first identify critical decision points based on our preliminary in-house schedule. These decision points include engaging engineers, consultants, furniture vendors and other project specific vendors. As the project moves along, we collaborate with our entire project team and take into consideration weather, street closures, holidays, out of country manufacturer holidays and many other items which can impact our schedule. We are meticulous upfront in exploring lead times and establishing concrete commitments with our vendors, subcontractors & manufacturers so that we can provide our clients with real time forecasted construction schedules. If procurement of long lead items becomes a challenge and preordering is not an option, we explore acceptable substitutions with the design team. In an effort to mirror client schedule software, we use Microsoft Project to form our Gantt Bar Chart and Critical Path Method schedules.
During construction, our subcontractors are required to submit daily logs to our superintendent documenting manpower and what activities were accomplished. Our Superintendent then reviews the logs with the subcontractor at the end of each week, so that manpower adjustments can be made, if required to stay on schedule. Our schedule is published weekly along with progress job site photos, so that team members who cannot attend the meeting, can see real time progress. We always keep the entire team apprised of the schedule status.
Procurement is established during preconstruction and programming. Many projects require ordering of materials and equipment in advance of construction. OMC is extremely diligent in tracking these procurements.