Most entrepreneurs that set out to build their own industrial property immediately run into the conundrum of where to start, and who to speak to first?

There are many construction professionals that join together in order to build a new industrial facility or a steel building.

You need an architect.

Architects are important role players in the process of designing functional and aesthetically pleasing buildings. They are professional people and needed to ensure your buildings are compliant with many design restrictions & council requirements, however, they are not necessarily graduated in project management (although some are) and neither are they responsible for engineering compliance i.e. structural integrity of your building as this is part of the engineers’ designs. They are also not experts in building costs calculations as this is a function performed by quantity surveyors.

You need an engineer.

Without the Engineers, there will also be no buildings as many engineers actively contribute to many aspects of the building project and often depending on the type of project act from different companies to supply their expertise, may it be geotechnical engineering, structural engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, fire engineer, etc.

As you can see, these are very specialized fields, but rarely, you will be able to find architectural advice or a deep insight into the design costing of all building elements together from a single engineer’s perspective as part of the engineer’s offering.     

You need a quantity surveyor (QS).

As with architects, the QS function is critical and although many other parts of their service are needed throughout the exitance of a project, although quantity surveyors are sufficiently schooled to perform the task of calculating the costs of buildings, they will be finding it difficult to provide you of any whatsoever estimate worth your while before any designs are done and specification of the elements of the building you are intending has been established. Furthermore, much of the other professional’s input is 1st needed.

You need a  building contractor.

Contractors understand the time aspects of building processes, the practical implementation of designs into an end product (your building), and the execution of tasks to get there.

However, most contractors work their costing processes off already drafted BOQs (Bills of Quantities), drafted by professional quantity surveyors, provided on behalf of the client, and the measured risk of such falls back on the client (or indirectly the QS employed by the client). 

Furthermore for the QS to have a BOQ of value, there must be an engineer’s design (or at least engineer’s estimate – i.e. on steel estimated tonnage and base sizes for column footings) to allow QS to apply such into BOQs. 

Most contractors also do not provide architectural or engineering designs to buildings as these are part of tender documents to receive for pricing the building’s costs, and would not get involved with designs i.e. by taking on design-risk that are covered by design professionals.

Although exceptions to some degree exist to each of these approaches, it is important for a new client that intends to build a new building to understand that to receive a holistic picture of what would be the most advantageous approach to establish what his building could look like, how much it would cost, how long it will take to build and know that the advice they received has been done by a company that has considered all the above professional’s roles and restrictions, and has years of experience in combining and managing all these disciplines to the successful end goal.

Therefore for the most cost-effective approach from the start, the answer to the dilemma of merging this multi-disciplines environment is to a holistic approach that weighs the pros & cons and selects the best balance between cost, functionality & practicality.