Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) in industrial projects delivers measurable benefits in cost, schedule, and quality. By engaging a contractor during front-end planning, owners gain real-time insights on design decisions, material availability, and constructability, reducing change orders and accelerating speed to market. JE Dunn’s collaborative approach has achieved millions in cost savings, significant schedule reductions, improved safety, and optimized facility performance. ECI fosters transparency, trust, and efficiency, creating a ripple effect that benefits all stakeholders.
Early collaboration and contractor involvement can have a ripple effect that results in cost and schedule savings—as well as a facility tailored to owners’ every need.
Contractors have historically not been engaged during early front-end planning stages of advanced manufacturing projects. However, when executed correctly, it can have far-reaching effects. From better collaboration and informed decision making to cost-saving solutions while delivering an optimal facility, early contractor involvement (ECI) can not only be the difference in cost and schedule, but it can also improve quality from design and construction all the way through owner occupancy.
ECI can bridge the gap between design and construction, ensuring design doesn’t happen too early. It sounds ironic, but being intentional about holding off on design until stakeholders have been engaged to provide key input regarding systems, loads, facility, flow, and more, can ultimately improve speed to market. ECI makes the contractor an advocate for design decisions during preconstruction. Real-time, model-based estimating becomes a design tool, helping weigh options such as metal panels versus precast concrete. ECI also allows us to best navigate today’s realities that sometimes include 60-week lead times.
By creating a direct line of communication between owners, contractors, designers, as well as key trade partners, JE Dunn’s collaborative delivery methods provide proven cost and schedule savings over traditional design-bid-build. A recent study by the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) found that design-build reduces cost growth by 3.8 percent on average compared with traditional design-bid-build. By engaging early, teams can preserve design intent while leveraging builder insights to optimize cost and schedule without sacrificing quality.
Before exploring the results, it is important to understand the reasons ECI translates to smoother, more cost-effective projects. The biggest advantage when it comes to early involvement is the critical experience of those in the field. With years of experience to lean on, construction professionals know how things will fit together, the sequence of the work to be put in place, and the best approach to ensure the design and the constructability of it match up, establishing a smoother process from the start. That expertise is put to the best use at the beginning of the project—when planning and understanding the impact of the work has a greater influence on the overall success of a project. Additionally, early involvement allows construction experts to impact decisions – whether constructability, cost, or schedule – without change order cost and delays that would be incurred later in the project. The objective is to reduce change orders and eliminate late project value engineering activities that are detrimental to a project schedule.
As project complexity and automation continues to grow, early engagement is even more critical. Design-build isn’t typically a great fit for developers’ prototype projects due to their standardization and predetermined specifications, but for highly specialized, advanced facilities, ECI can maximize scope and help with team cohesion. Collaborating early helps ensure the design is constructible and efficient before it gets too far down the road, allowing a contractor to provide valuable input for structural, mechanical, and unique local conditions up front. Because designers are not tied to procurement of materials, builders are better suited to help identify decisions on construction material availability, which can have a huge impact on schedule, both positive and negative.
Up-front involvement and collaboration have real and direct impacts on project design that are immediately seen from both cost and schedule standpoints. From early procurement to working alongside architects to comparing design impacts against the budget in real time, ECI provides many opportunities to reduce costs while maintaining the integrity of the owner’s intent. The design-build team that recently delivered Georgia-Pacific’s new Dixie manufacturing plant in Jackson, Tenn. employed choosing by advantages to determine the best structural system for the project. By transitioning from custom joists to K series joists, they achieved cost savings exceeding $7 million.
Leveraging ECI correctly also shows owners how and where time can be saved on the schedule in addition to immediate cost impacts for many reasons. These include a reduction in change orders, enhanced prefabrication planning, and the ability to essentially fast track portions of the design to align with construction activities – all saving time on the schedule.
Some impacts come down to seemingly simple changes—but have complex ramifications thanks to the timing of them. During a recent addition to an operational manufacturing plant, the team was able to provide a 16-week schedule savings at no cost to the client, among other schedule- and cost-saving solutions. This was made possible by providing options and weighing their repercussions before design was complete. “Due to JE Dunn’s experience and understanding of current market conditions, we were able to suggest modifying the construction type from Pre-Engineered Metal Building (PEMB) to Concrete Masonry Unit (CMU) structure. This suggested change saved an estimated 16 weeks on the project with no additional cost,” said Senior Vice President Brent Strength.
Other ECI outcomes in recent industrial projects include:
While the benefits are easy to see on paper, it’s the end users who ultimately see the tangible results that ECI offers. On two recent Vehicle Processing Centers for Southeast Toyota Distributors, the owner prioritized their associates, keeping their needs at the forefront for every decision, which trickled down to the design and construction team. “The project was and should serve as a blueprint of the potential outcomes of ECI, as well as the value of transparency and trust between all parties,” said Vice President Scott Bodden. “We established a set of mutual project goals at the beginning—developed with employee input and buy-in— which helped drive the options the team presented early on. The new facility is now twice as efficient as the old one, and safety incidents have been cut in half thanks to collaborative design and construction and truly thinking through the way the building is used.”
The bottom line when it comes to early contractor involvement is that owners get the best of both worlds—schedule and cost projections with such a high level of accuracy that they aid decision making and improve the quality of each project. The ripple effect means the results are across all three aspects—cost, schedule, and quality—creating a positive domino effect that delivers optimal results for all parties. By having means and methods discussions early in projects, teams usually end up with better design that is more cost effective and makes the best use of dollars and resources, so all parties come out ahead.
