| Volume 3, Number 1 Winter 2000/2001 |
|
If you've never participated in a design charrette, then you've missed one of the most innovative decision-making processes.
"Common sense is not so common." While Voltaire may not have had design and engineering in mind when he coined that phrase, it still applies. And when it comes to preliminary designing and engineering of light rail facilities, that application could not be more stark. It might seem like common sense to have owners and users integrally involved in the preliminary design process, but that is the exception, not the rule, in the industry. However, some pioneering architecture and engineering firms are changing all of that.
"The best facilities are the ones that are designed hand-in-hand with the owner," says Mark Ellis, senior project manager for Maintenance Design Group (MDG). "It makes perfect sense. They're the ultimate user and it's their dime. As designers, we walk away and move onto another project. We don't live in that facility everyday. They do. So they should have intense, valuable input into the design.
"Now that sounds like a great marketing strategy - and it is - but it's also a working philosophy," he continues. "And it serves a very real purpose: we bring our expertise to the client's facility and incorporate their individual and specific needs during an open and evolving forum. We don't design anything in a vacuum. We work with the owner's people - the end users - to address issues up front and make more options available to owners in a faster and less expensive timeframe."
|
|
Ellis and his MDG team recently applied this philosophy for the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County's (Houston Metro) Light Rail Yard and Shop Facility. Deploying a wide number of innovative planning techniques, the team incorporated considerable owner input throughout the preliminary design process, culminating in a four-day, onsite design charrette. Ellis believes that the charrette approach - a process where the design team essentially brings a complete design studio to an owner's facility for an extended, integrative design session - along with other innovative planning techniques - not only saved money, it further empowered Houston Metro to create their ideal system.
"Everyone has preconceived notions of how they want a facility to look and function," explains Ellis. "In Houston, we went through the charrette and it changed everyone's mind quite a bit. A great example is the location of the vehicle wash building. Traditionally, wash buildings are detached, in most cases far from the rest of the shops. After interviewing the users and touring other facilities throughout the country, we all agreed it wasn't good to have that facility so remotely located, especially for workers late at night."
"During the charrette, we showed them how difficult it would be for their workers to operate safely and effectively with a detached wash building," says Ellis. "Then we showed them a design with the wash building incorporated into the facility. In this particular instance, incorporating it was a better solution. And that's exactly why we go through this process."
"We bring a national perspective and a wealth of experience from all of the facilities that we've designed," Ellis adds. "Then we combine that in an interactive, dynamic session with the vital knowledge from the owner and users to develop a facility that is perfectly suited for the work to be performed and for the workers who perform it. We've found that it's simply the best, most efficient way to blend our expertise and the owner's desire."
Steve Silkworth, MDG senior project manager who led the preliminary design effort for the Denver RTD Light Rail Facility, believes that the onsite design charrette may be the single most important innovation for creating facilities that truly serve their owners' needs.
"Unless someone is constantly involved in design work, it's very difficult for them to look at a space needs program - which is basically a spreadsheet with room names and dimensions - and truly understand what those numbers mean in a real physical sense," he says. "The charrettes not only deepen that understanding, they make the whole design process more interactive.
"Essentially, the design process is a series of review meetings during which the client has the opportunity to choose the best from the best. Each day we come back with different revisions, solving problems, adding options, addressing concerns. There's never an ideal site or set of conditions which address site issues and conditions. Charrettes illustrate how the design process evolves and builds consent among all shareholders. It's a very eye-opening educational process for everyone involved."
|
|
While providing a more tailored facility for the client, the single greatest advantage of a charrette is speed. Rather than a design team presenting drawings, hearing feedback, going back to the drawing board, then returning weeks later with revised drawings, the charrette facilitates actual design changes in immediate, real time.
If a client wants a dispatch center to be in one particular spot, for example, the design team can try that action and see if it fits in with the rest of the plan. If it doesn't, they'll propose another solution and try that configuration instantly. Gaining input from all concerned parties, the team irons out the design in days instead of weeks or months. But there are a whole host of intangible benefits as well.
By working closely with all of the future stakeholders in a facility, a design team observes subtleties and preferences that would normally go unnoticed and incorporates them easily into the design. In addition, because the charrette is usually done onsite, anyone can be brought in by the owner to offer their opinion. Lloyd Mack, general superintendent of light rail operations for Denver's RTD, provides a perfect illustration.
"I had a question about railings," he says.  "I wanted to know what would work best on the work floor. So, I went onto the floor and pulled one of our mechanics into the charrette. First of all, he was shocked - no one had ever asked him about design before. Then something incredible happened. He offered the best perspective we could have gotten on how those railings are used everyday. In hindsight, it seems obvious that that's extremely valuable input. But it never had occurred to us to ask him or someone in his position before; it just never would have happened without the charrette. Now that mechanic feels tremendous ownership in our new facility. After all, to him, he's the one who 'put the railings where they should go.'
"But something else happened which even I didn't expect," Mack continues. "Before the charrette, I had never before sat down with our facility maintenance group. And I had never sat down with the communications people or the computer people before either. I had never heard their working concerns before in terms of our facility. I'd never had a reason. At the charrette, I sat down with them as they presented their concerns. I got to find out what everybody in our new facility truly needs. That made a huge difference in my understanding of their facility needs. And it gave us a chance to get to know each other better."
"Traditionally, many of their concerns were afterthoughts; we weren't addressing their needs in the facility design. Now they've got what they need to do their job and they, too, are invested emotionally in the new building. They had input and I was there to hear them. Say what you want, but I can't think of a single project where the charrette approach wouldn't help. This was the first charrette I've ever experienced, but you better believe that I'm going to insist on them from here on out."
|
|
The charrette approach is only part of an entire, integrative philosophy of incorporating owner and user input into the initial decision-making process. From identifying key design features particular to individual owners' needs to the application of current equipment and technology to touring existing facilities, the operative concept that separates this process from the traditional modality is the early and valued inclusion of the owner and end user as a resource, a valued participant in the design process. Their recognized input in that design process - as opposed to only learning their desires from a Request for Proposal and a series of meetings - serves to reduce the amount of time and rework inherent in the traditional design process.
Understanding this concept is one thing. Expressing it to owners unfamiliar with the approach can be quite another. At first, many owners are skeptical; it is wholly unfamiliar to most and many have never been asked in working detail what they want. However, MDG's Ellis believes that the concept can be explained clearly by pointing out how the integrative approach takes the traditional approach and "folds it into itself."
"We have a very simple graph that illustrates the advantage of the integrative approach," he says. "It shows two lines on a timeline. At the  beginning of the timeline, these two lines are far apart. The lines represent the owner's ability to change his or her mind and what that translates to in terms of cost and feasibility. At the outset, it's easy and inexpensive to change your mind. As you move further through design and down that timeline, those two lines start coming together.
"Eventually, they cross and go in opposite directions illustrating that changes at the end of the process are expensive and difficult. At that end of the timeline, those lines represent change orders and RFIs. No one wants change orders and RFIs because as everyone knows they're very costly and don't enable the best designs. By incorporating dynamic input from the owner at the beginning of the process, we're folding the change-order and RFI process into programming and conceptual design. We can compress two or three months of conceptual design into a two-week session, for example. That's a more effective way to design and construct a facility and to ensure that owners and users get exactly what they want."
Common sense can never be overrated. Yet as Voltaire admonished, it is often the exception and not the rule. However, for owners who have experienced the benefits of the integrative design approach, common sense is fast becoming the rule for designing their maintenance facilities.
|
|
|
|
On-site charrette sessions involve users and stakeholders in the early
stages of the design process.
|
|
|
|
