Hello Reader,
Value engineering is the name we give to a conversation that should have happened months earlier.
I spent ten years on the owner's side of the table, the side that hires architects. On that side cost is never a surprise. Somebody has been tracking it since the first week, against a budget that was set before anyone drew anything. By the time a number reaches the design team it has already been reconciled twice. The design team meets it as a verdict. The owner's team has been watching it add up.
My guest this week, Andy Wise, sits on the other side of that same table. He's a design phase manager at Mortenson, in the internal group that treats a building like a manufactured product, and his job puts him with design teams during the stretch where cost is still mostly assumption. He talked about working in tools where cost, area, and program ride along with the model, so that several people can look at a trade-off together while it is still a trade-off and not yet a cut.
He thinks it changes the design itself, close to the opposite of what most architects expect. His line was, "We're gonna be designers again."
I think he's right, and the reason is about when, not what. Cost that shows up late only lets your judgment defend something. Cost that shows up early lets your judgment choose. The hours in most fee proposals protect the drawing. They don't protect the decision, and the decision is the part a client is actually buying.
Most architects would say putting a number in front of a client while it's still moving feels like exposure. I'd put it the other way. A client who watched you work with a number that wasn't settled yet has seen you make a judgment call in front of them. That's a different kind of trust than the kind you ask for by presenting a finished set and holding your breath.
Most firms I talk to want to be in the cost conversation. Very few have asked when it starts.
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| /// the adaptability read /// |
| Where does your firm land? |
| Sixteen questions, five to seven minutes. Your result comes up on screen and tells you which of four areas to work on first. |
| take the Read |
What would you have designed differently on your last project if you'd known the number in the first month instead of the fifth?
I read every reply and I answer them, so feel free to write any time.
Keep learning and growing,
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Evelyn Lee, FAIA | NOMA
Founder, Practice of Architecture
Host, Practice Disrupted & Fractional COO
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Thursday's bonus episode with Andy Wise of Mortenson was co-created with Arcol, the platform that pulls real-time cost, area, and feasibility straight into the massing, so the picture stays live while you and the client are still deciding. If you've ever lost a project in the space between "interesting" and "what will it cost," it's worth seeing in motion.
See Arcol in action.
/// practice disrupted ///
🎧 Bonus: Making the invisible visible, cost, design and client trust, with Andy Wise, co-created with Arcol
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Andy Wise, design phase manager at Mortenson, on getting real cost into the room while the design is still soft, what changes when a builder is in the conversation before the set is drawn, and why he thinks doing less drafting makes architects more like designers rather than less.
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/// the signal ///
Three things, none of which ran in the Lab or my LinkedIn roundup.
KPMG has set up an internal group whose job is to launch AI-native businesses that run, by the firm's own description, like independent startups with their own founders, funding, and staff, reported in Accounting Today. A professional services firm is deliberately funding the thing that will compete with its own billable hours. I don't expect architecture firms to stand up venture arms. I do think most firms already have the architecture version of this sitting on someone's laptop, and the only question is whether the firm owns it or watches it leave with the person who built it.
Owen Hopkins argued in Dezeen on October 1 that architecture has not reinvented higher education as boldly as it should have. I'd add the part that lands on practices rather than on schools. Whatever the degree stopped teaching, somebody still pays to teach it, and right now that somebody is the firm that hires the graduate. Firms absorb that as training time nobody budgets for and almost nobody writes down, which is why it gets taught again from scratch every few years.
Will Swearingen of Zweig Group wrote in The Zweig Letter about owners who want top dollar for their firm but won't pay to produce financials a buyer can follow. Converting and recasting the books on an accrual basis can cost less than $10,000, against millions in value at risk. Plenty of firms keep their books on a cash basis because that's how they file taxes, and he's clear that isn't wrong on its own. The trouble starts when it's the only picture there is. A buyer wants to know what you earned, what you've done and not billed, and what you've billed and not collected. If the only way to answer is to rebuild the books after an offer arrives, you've already given up time and leverage.
Want more where this came from? I track all of it week to week, and Lab members get the full list every Friday, with sources and one line on what each item means for a practice.
more about the Lab
/// the handoff /// - something you can do on Monday
The cost date
Twenty minutes with one finished project and your own files.
1. Pick the last project that went through value engineering.
2. Find the earliest document in your files that carries a real cost number, not a budget target or an allowance. Write down its date.
3. Find the design decision that set the massing, the structure, or the envelope. Write down its date.
4. Count the weeks between the two.
5. Name who gave you that first number, and whether you asked for it or it arrived.
/// up and coming ///
The next three on the calendar:
Drury University, lecture, Hammons School of Architecture, Springfield, Missouri, October 14.
AIA/NOMA Leadership Panel, moderator, NOMA Annual Conference, Miami, October 16.
BQE webinar, workforce strategy and the future of the A/E firm, virtual, October 21, 11am Pacific and 2pm Eastern, earns one CEU. register here
If you'll be at any of these, come find me and say hello.
The full list is at evelynlee.com/speaking.
Booking for 2027? Reply to this email and let's find a date.
