When building your project team, how do you choose from a pool of capable firms to find the best architect, builder, engineer, and other partners?
While there may be multiple qualified candidates on paper, there’s so much more to consider—you need someone who will truly be a partner, walking through the journey with you as you take your project from idea into the physical space that meets your organizational goals. That level of commitment is what defines collaborative construction delivery.
What sets a good partner apart from a great one is a team that is just as invested in your project as you are.
You need people who wholeheartedly believe in your vision and go above and beyond to ensure that the places created are not just buildings, but spaces that empower you to live your mission and the people who use them every day.
Your project is so much more than a building. It’s a direct reflection of your organization and the people who interact with it every day. A team that makes your goals their own, shares a passion for your project, and is committed to construction project delivery that meets your vision will ensure the process is smooth and meets your short- and long-term needs.
An integrated project team—where the architect, builder, engineer, construction partner, and owner are aligned from the beginning—creates clarity and accountability across every phase. With early contractor involvement, potential challenges are identified during design rather than after construction begins.
As you build your team and carefully select your partners, consider how their approach, their mission, and their values align with your own. Search for examples of how they live their client commitment and approach partnerships.
In addition to working with you as the owner, you also want to ensure the partners you choose can collaborate to deliver your space.
For example, how do the architect and builder work together to ensure constructability during preconstruction? You need a builder who will conduct thorough constructability reviews, identifying potential challenges while aligning closely with the architect to preserve design intent. How would the two work independently, and together, to add value to your project?
Team collaboration was critical when delivering a 56,000 SF addition to St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, the largest project undertaken by a single parish within the Omaha Archdiocese.
The team worked closely together, using a variety of technology tools to verify plans, conduct proactive risk identification, and assess constructability throughout the project. As steel erection began, it was determined that select crossmember braces needed to be added. Boyd Jones and the engineering team worked closely together to quickly address the issue, saving the owner more than $120,000 and preventing six weeks of construction delays.
Acting as one aligned, collaborative team proved critical to on-time, successful construction project delivery that serves longstanding needs for the growing parish.
When choosing your project partners, you want a team that is with you from day one through completion and beyond. For a construction partner, this means getting involved before groundbreaking and staying committed after completion and turnover.
Furthermore, working with a partner who views the relationship as a long-term construction partnership and will help you deliver your vision across multiple projects can be transformative in ensuring your long-term organizational needs are met.
Boyd Jones has longstanding partnerships with Baxter Auto Group, Airlite Plastics, and numerous school districts, including Papillion La Vista Community Schools, Springfield Platteview Community Schools, and DC West Community Schools. These are just a few examples of our years-long commitment to working with our partners across multiple projects to deliver master facilities plans that help organizations meet growing community needs.
In addition to choosing a partner who will continue to be your advocate after project completion, search for an expert who has established relationships with your other project partners—architects, engineers, construction management experts, trade partners, owner’s advocates, and others. These foundational relationships will empower your entire team to hit the ground running and apply collective best practices to ensure the success of your space.
As you search for a partner, you may meet firms that promise they can deliver your project exactly as-is, no considerations. Or, maybe they over-promise what’s possible—proposing a timeline that’s drastically ahead of schedule or significantly under your expected budget.
Every project is bound to have challenges that require strategic team alignment to ensure on-time, on-schedule delivery—or even exceed expectations and deliver ahead of schedule and under budget.
To deliver this success, construction projects require a collaborative process that brings all teams together and necessitates experts willing to dive deep into potential challenges before they over-promise and under-deliver.
Whether it’s long-lead items, potential schedule challenges, or unknown conditions, it’s much better to have a partner who proactively pulls back the curtain on these challenges and presents solutions from day one. That is the foundation of effective collaborative construction delivery.
When working on an addition to Airlite Plastics to expand the company’s operations, market conditions caused extended lead times for electrical switchgear. Our project manager began looking for solutions from day one. The project manager leveraged their knowledge of the owner’s existing facilities and a critical assessment of project specifications, and collaborated with the owner and architect to revise the switchgear specification in a long-lead procurement strategy to ensure it aligned with the existing systems. This strategic change led to reduced lead time and avoided significant schedule impacts.
Choosing a construction partner that leads with solutions and collaborates with the entire team to proactively solve challenges can make a profound difference in ensuring successful delivery.
The spaces we bring to life are the direct representation of the people who use them, those they serve, and those who interact with them every day.
Whether it’s through student engagement that teaches young learners about the building process, involving local trade partners to truly represent your space, or building public support and buy-in to pass bonds, project partnerships and collaborative construction delivery extend to communities and the people at the heart of projects.
Including the community in the project process and considering how the many different elements impact them can drive excitement and empower places that truly represent those they serve.
Our partnership with UmónHon Nation Public Schools to build an addition to the existing school on the Omaha Reservation in Macy, Nebraska, demonstrated the transformative power of building community-focused spaces with the people the project serves.
A core part of this project was the Against the Current Career Academy, which offers dynamic, hands-on education in six specialty career paths to empower students with real skills they can apply in the community after graduation. We leaned into our relationships and held outreach events to ensure local trade partner participation, and ensured that every project element would serve the community as it was designed to.
The result is an award-winning facility that solidifies the school as a community cornerstone and truly represents the District’s mission of providing a student-centered education in a safe and respectful learning environment that allows students to strengthen Native American traditions and flourish in other cultures.
Working with partners who go beyond building for communities and build with them ensures the projects represent the people they serve from day one for years to come.
Choosing your project team is so much more than selecting an architect, a builder, an engineer, or another partner. Your project team should share your vision for success, recognize the power of collaborative construction delivery, and work together to realize a space that achieves your goals now and into the future.
Finding partners who align with your aspirations, are committed to building a lasting relationship, explore all potential challenges, lead with solutions, and involve the community is fundamental to building a space that not only meets your expectations but also exceeds them.
