Seattle DJC.com local business news and data – Construction
November 21, 2024
Dialed in on efficiency design-build as a successful delivery method for affordable housing
By DALE NEWCOMBE and RUMI TAKAHASHI
Special to the Journal
Newcombe
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Takahashi
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Starting a decade ago, the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) began outreach and visioning efforts for a community-centered mixed-use project that would provide high-quality affordable homes and ground floor retail spaces to revitalize the Hilltop neighborhood and address a growing need for affordable housing. Over the course of several years, THA, as part of an affordable housing tax credit partnership (“Partnership”), engaged in early design and development efforts for Housing Hilltop, a two-building community in the heart of the Hilltop neighborhood that provides 231 affordable apartments and 13,000 square feet of ground-level commercial space.
That initial vision is now a reality with the completion of the project at the end of September and lease-up activities underway.
THA, like most affordable housing owners, faced unique challenges in financing and designing this project. They needed to assure funding partners of the feasibility of the project’s budget prior to the development of a fully vetted building design. Once the project was designed and permitted, they then needed to assure funding partners that the project could be executed with minimal scope changes or cost increases.
It was therefore imperative that THA and the Partnership select trusted design and construction partners who had the expertise and capacity to guide design and estimating efforts that aligned with project financing efforts. THA and the Partnership explored various teaming approaches with a view to improving efficiency and reducing cost for the project, and ultimately selected Walsh Construction in 2021 to act as a design-builder.
Walsh has a strong track record in the affordable housing sector, having delivered over 57,000 affordable homes in Oregon and Washington to numerous nonprofit and housing authority clients. Walsh then selected SMR Architects, a local firm with 47 years of experience in the affordable housing industry, as their design partner. Embracing a design-build model with the Walsh and SMR team yielded remarkable results, setting a new standard for the delivery of mixed-use affordable housing in our region.
BENEFITS OF THE DESIGN-BUILD APPROACH
Having worked together on over 35 affordable housing projects, Walsh and SMR were able to quickly ramp up design coordination efforts in an integrated target-value design effort. The benefits of this approach include:
Owner’s goals around budget and quality were established early and embraced by the entire team. The team was focused on discipline and efficiency when it came to certain design decisions with intentional goals to optimize functional space, minimize the number of apartment, kitchen and bathroom layouts, and align design decisions around the dimensions of materials (i.e. wall heights aligned with drywall sheet sizes, window dimensions aligned with exterior wall framing spacing).
Walsh and subcontractor perspectives guided design development, providing real time feedback on cost, constructability and quality. The team was able to make early informed decisions, particularly for the higher cost, critical decisions around building systems, structural concrete, framing and building enclosure. Locking in decisions early helped avoid the change orders that are often seen when those parties are brought in at later stages of design.
Walsh’s team emphasized efficiency and productivity, with focused meeting agendas. Potential upgrades were considered in a timely manner allowing for proactive, informed decision making when considering options to improve the quality of the project.
Due to the focused integrated design efforts by SMR and Walsh, the bid set drawings and specifications were thoroughly vetted and complete, which led to a strong subcontractor response. A high level of diligence and care in the bid packages was evident to potential subcontractors, which created a high level of buy-in.
The design-build delivery structure provided a solid foundation of trust, collaboration and transparency. This ethos extended beyond the core project team to the subconsultants and subcontractors which led to collaborative and efficient problem-solving and decision making.
Affordable housing owners must make commitments to their funding partners to deliver projects within a total budget and to lease-up apartments within a certain timeline (often needing to hit 100% occupancy by a specific date). Walsh and SMR embraced those constraints and successfully delivered the Housing Hilltop project ahead of schedule and below the target budget.
This delivery model also yielded numerous other qualitative and quantitative results for THA:
• Due to the conditions of project funding, the Partnership needed to get building permit issued quickly and Walsh and SMR’s efficient integrated design efforts led to a building permit application within eight months of the team mobilizing, and permit issuance five months after application. This is a notable accomplishment for these two large mixed-use buildings. The city of Tacoma is to be commended for their role in this result as they have developed an effective cross-agency prioritization process for affordable housing.
• Due to the efforts outlined above, a strong bid response resulted in a final price in late 2022 that was less than the previous pricing from early 2022 – quite the accomplishment in the highly volatile construction market at the time.
• Because of the completeness of the construction documents, there were very few change orders related to design changes there were no Architect’s Supplemental Instructions (ASIs) and fewer than 70 Requests for Information (RFIs). With the small number of design or scope related changes, THA was able to use their contingency for value-add upgrades, including selecting higher quality countertops and finishes, hardware, and enhancing security and communications systems.
The Partnership took a risk in selecting a design-build delivery model for the Housing Hilltop project. The team of Walsh and SMR illustrated that design-build can be an effective model to alleviate risk – to hit target budgets, manage cost volatility, and execute projects efficiently. Walsh and SMR took great pride in meeting THA’s and the Partnership’s goals for project execution, and most importantly, delivering 231 high-quality affordable homes and retail spaces to benefit the Hilltop community.
Dale Newcombe is a senior project manager at Walsh Construction who has delivered thousands of affordable homes in his 20-year tenure at Walsh. Rumi Takahashi is a principal at SMR who offers high quality, problem-solving and collaboration-centered design to affordable housing and social service organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest.
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