William Reid: [00:00:00] All right. Good morning everybody. I'm back here in the inside studio in the Sierra Nevada mountains and fall is upon us, so it's starting to get cold outside, so everything's gonna start moving inside as we continue on in our podcast episode, in the design process. And we are in the design development stage. If you didn't listen earlier, we've talked about the schematic design process, which was more of the organic free-flowing process as you begin designing your project with your architect. And then we moved into design development and we're still in design development. And I talked about where design development is really the primary core process of design for a project, and there's a lot of facets to it, and that's what we're here to talk about today.

In our first episode of design development, I spoke about what I call the commitment phase, and that is where you actually have [00:01:00] explored all your ideas in the very first stepping stone called schematic design. And now you are picking. You're selecting the styles and the floor plans and the orientation of your home amongst many other things as you work with your architect. So as we move into the next stage of design development, a big part of what happens—there's a lot of things that happen in design development, that's why it's multiple episodes.

But one of the first things that's gonna happen in this episode is we're gonna be talking about how your architect begins refining your plan and your design while also bringing in a team of design consultants that you may need on a project. So once the architect's been given direction to say, "Okay, we want to go with floor plan B, and we like the master suite in floor plan C, and we like [00:02:00] the view looking this direction," the architects and your designers are now going to start digging deeper into the plan. And what that means is they're gonna be working with you, firming up all of the locations of the rooms, the names of the rooms, the sizes of the rooms. They'll start working on all the fenestration, which are the windows and exterior doors of the home, making sure that all of those are properly sized and proportioned and configured. And then the architect will be really diving into all of the exterior materials in the project, down to specifying exact make and models of materials, the application of those materials, the methods, and how it's all gonna look on the project.

And we're gonna talk about specifically specifications in the next episode. But let's back up and talk about what they're gonna be doing now. While the architect is working on finalizing and refining [00:03:00] your spaces in your home and ceiling heights and all kinds of things, they're also gonna be bringing in design consultants. I've already talked about the primary design consultants that come into play in a custom home project or even a remodel project. Frankly, if you're doing a remodel and adding onto your home, there's going to be design consultants that come into play on a project. It may not be as many as a new home construction project, but that is one of the big aspects.

So in the early stages of design, you've got maybe a trio of your orchestra. You've got your architect, you've got you, your architect, and maybe an interior designer. Maybe not at that early stage, although I do recommend bringing an interior designer as soon as possible on a project because they can influence the design [00:04:00] of the project beyond just picking out materials. It could be moving walls or moving windows to proper locations that coalesce with the kitchen design, for example, or the bathroom design. So your architect kind of goes from, I guess I'll call it a solo artist to a conductor of the project. They'll be bringing in people to help them design the project and document the project.

So let's talk about what just happened to your project team. During schematic design, it was you, your architect, and maybe an interior designer. Think of it as a small jazz trio, playing improvisational music. But design development—suddenly you need a full orchestra. And with your architect conducting multiple sections of specialists, all playing from the same sheet music to create your magnificent new home. Your architect is incredibly talented, we hope, at [00:05:00] interpreting all of your inspirations and ideas and translating that into design work and rendering so that you can get a sense of what your new home's gonna look like.

Some people think an architect knows everything. They don't. Architects know a lot and they've spent their whole career perfecting and polishing that. But there's certain aspects, especially as we evolve into the world of design, that they don't necessarily focus on and probably shouldn't. And that could be aspects like the structural engineering of the project. That could be the civil engineering of the project, which I've spoken about in previous episodes. It could be how the home is oriented on the lot. And a civil engineer provides [00:06:00] all of that information about where is the best place to orient the home on the lot relative to the slopes, the drainage, and even the soil conditions that have also been investigated, hopefully by your soils engineer.

And again, you can go back and listen to a little bit more about what a soils engineer does. So there are some early consultants that have been brought in even prior to this stage of design, and it's usually your land surveyor who draws up and documents your boundaries and the slope of your lot. And it's your soils engineer who's taken soil samples from the anticipated location of the structures and they are brought back in at this time where now that you know exactly the style, the shape, the configuration of the home, and maybe even the outbuilding structures. And the architect will take all of that data, especially from the survey and the civil engineer, and start siting the home, placing the home on the lot. And we'll be interfacing with those consultants to make sure that [00:07:00] where the architect would like to put the home relative to your aspirations for the view or keeping your view out of the neighbor's lot, whatever it may be. It could be a very simple square lot and there's really no options, right? It could be a square flat lot. There's not a lot to talk about, but it could be a two-acre parcel with slopes and rock outcroppings and all different types of things.

They will come to a final decision on where to place the lot. And it's not just left or right or up and back and forth. It's also up and down. So the civil engineer can help decide how high the structure should be projecting out of the ground, the floor height of the structure, so that the drainage can be accomplished successfully. So that's a really good example that people don't necessarily think about, that a civil engineer can contribute to an architect's work. Architects are fully capable of doing [00:08:00] a lot of this work, but having a civil engineer for a higher-end custom home project helps establish this very essential element of proper design and construction. Not to mention everything else the civil engineer does. You can listen back to that episode, so look for that one and you can learn everything about it.

So survey, soils engineers, civil engineers—I think I called them the lords of the dirt. They revisit all that and make a final determination and present that to you. Now during the design development stage of this episode, this empowers an architect to provide you renderings, three-dimensional renderings of your home, sitting on the lot at the proper height, at the proper location, showing proposed driveways and walkways, pathways, retaining walls. Sometimes [00:09:00] where the civil engineers participated in those designs. And this is what you are looking for—you're looking to really just lock it in and say, "Yes, I really want this."

Now, I've had projects in the past where using 3D renderings we're able to actually walk through the home and walk out onto the deck or the patio and look at the view of the potential location of the home. And I've had projects where we've actually rotated the home 10 degrees, 15 degrees, or we've raised it up six inches or a foot or back or forward. So this is the time to make that final determination. And why is that important? Because what the architect's working towards is he's working towards submitting these plans to the structural engineer for their final analysis.

Now, hopefully during the design of the project, whether it's a remodel or new construction, a structural [00:10:00] engineer has been engaged with informally just to say, "Okay, look, here's what we're thinking. We want a building that's 35 feet tall and this wide, and all those windows and all that glass," and there's been some kind of early stage exchanges between architect and structural engineer to make sure that the proposed design is reasonably realistic so that when it eventually formally gets to the structural engineer, they can then do their analysis. That's one of the biggest goals here of this stage of design development with the coordination of the consultants—making these final choices. And you are part of those final choices as the homeowner to make sure that everything looks right to you before it goes to the engineer.

While the architect is preparing a set of plans for the structural engineer, there's gonna be a point where there's a handoff to the [00:11:00] structural engineer, and then they take the project for multiple weeks. It could be four to six, eight weeks, depending on the size of the project and do all of their work. In the past episode, you may recall structural engineering, where I talk about how they really are designing the skeleton of your home. They are coming up with all of the design of the framework from the foundation, the concrete foundation to the floor system, to the walls, the ceilings, the roof—everything. And they're coming up with an instruction manual, if you will, for your contractor to be able to build off of, to be able to order all their lumber off of, to be able to order all of their structural hardware.

And the engineer will be [00:12:00] specifying all of the connections that need to be made between beams and walls and ceilings and floors. And this is really an extensive set of instructions that ultimately your contractor will depend on and use more often than anything else. So this supplements the architectural drawings that your architect has done and submitted to the engineers. So they'll be going off both of those. But ultimately, your contractor, your builder, will be diving into the structural elements of the project.

So while that's occurring, there's a process that the architect will be going through and that will be working from the outside in and starting to specify all of the materials that go on the project, and we'll talk about that in the next episode. But one thing I don't wanna forget is an interior design aspect of a project can be really important, and before you actually submit the plans to the engineer, it's always good to have an interior designer present [00:13:00] during the schematic design and even early in the design development. And that's because there's a coordination effort there between interpreting your lifestyle and your requirements from an interior aspect, where the architect's often thinking about a little bit bigger picture, more globally, and interior designers are gonna be thinking exactly how big the sink is and where the window might need to get moved. And I've talked a lot about this in past episodes, so I don't want to beat that one to death. But before you send the plans to the structural engineer to set things in stone, per se, it's always good to have an interior designer.

So what happens is the architect will take their plans and they will export out of their design software a file that can be then imported into the structural engineer's software. Now, I've seen a [00:14:00] lot of Facebook groups and people talking all over the internet. I'm still seeing hand-drawn plans on graph paper by draftspeople, or maybe worse by you, that are getting used to actually design a project, and that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about—this whole podcast and this whole endeavor is about a homeowner who's interested in hiring professionals to do their project. If you're going down that other route, this may not help you, but if you are working with an architect or plan to work with a sophisticated architect that does their drawings with a software—for me, which is a no-brainer and a standard, but I realize that there's other people trying to accomplish things out there different ways. I don't recommend it. But, so anyway, I digress.

So the idea is to export and import the plans from the architect to the engineer. And this is about a very [00:15:00] productive experience so that they can then immediately start analyzing the structure. You don't really necessarily want a structural engineer completely regenerating the drawings in their own software if you can avoid it. But that can happen too. So again, they're using that software to design the structure, the bones, the connections, the methods, and the assembly instructions for your architect.

Now, keep in mind what we're working towards in design development is we're working towards, at the end of this stage, starting to develop actual plan pages for a project. And why do you care about that? Because ultimately they're building a set of plans. We're still in the middle of that, but they're building a set of plans and specifications to eventually submit to the city for the building permit and planning department approvals and so on. But also in design development, at the end of [00:16:00] design development, we're gonna want to be able to analyze the cost of the project before we move into what's called step three, stepping stone three, construction documents. This is our opportunity to go beyond just guessing games and square footages, and we're gonna be able to actually get costs on a project. So keep this in mind that one of the big picture objectives is to position us to be able to get cost on the project before you invest even more money into the design of the project because you could jump back a little bit and make decisions on materials, phases, options, et cetera.

Now, before I mentioned during the design development stage, or even in the early in the schematic design stage, the free-flowing, moving walls and roofs all around, you may have declared certain options or phases that you may want to [00:17:00] consider for a project, whether it's for cost or it could even be for if you're planning to live in your home during a remodel. There's a lot of reasons why projects get phased out. A lot of times it's because of cost and we haven't necessarily made those final decisions yet, even in the design development stage, but we've declared them and identified them so that when it comes time to do some cost analysis, you're gonna be able to do that and then make final decisions at the end of design development.

For example, you may say, "I think I'm gonna wait on the separate accessory dwelling unit that I want to have. I want to design it, but I don't want to actually build it. So I want to get a separate cost for that." Doing a master plan is a really smart way to go because you're going to be able to put in some of the infrastructure possibly for that accessory dwelling unit now, so it's easier to do it later. [00:18:00] There's a lot of reasons why you want to master plan. You may want to know that the placement of that separate structure is in the right location relative to your primary home. There's a lot of reasons why master planning works and phasing and options can work at the early stages of design.

All right, so visualize yourself working with your architect. Now you've got the structural engineer involved. Now you're pivoting while that's happening and you're working with your interior designer and you're starting to specify materials, furniture, layout, all kinds of things that the interior designer helps you with. Meanwhile, the architect's on the outside of the home working on entry doors and siding and trim and windows and roofing material and the gutter style. There's all kinds of things that the architect has to do and a lot of this goes on behind the scenes, and that's where [00:19:00] sometimes homeowners don't realize how much time really goes into a custom home project from an architect's standpoint.

And the architect's responsibility is to document all of this information somewhere. It could be in the plans, it could be in a separate specification book, which we're gonna talk about in next episode. So you've got this happening. Meanwhile, the architect is also starting to bring back in, if you haven't already consulted before, bringing in the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design aspect of the project. Now, that could be done by the architect, but in a larger, more sophisticated custom home project, it's not uncommon—I should say it's not as common, but separate engineering consultants come into play to actually design these systems. So regardless of whether it's your architect or separate mechanical, which is all your heating, [00:20:00] ventilation, and air conditioning systems, electrical and lighting, pretty self-explanatory, and plumbing, very self-explanatory—these are the systems of your home that need to be thought through. And they also need to be thought through and correlated with the structural design.

So there's gonna be things about ductwork and plumbing drops and chases and supply returns and all of these things that have to be incorporated into the home, and it's the architect's responsibility. This goes to the orchestration aspect of it to make sure that these things are thought through ahead of time to eliminate a lot of problems during construction. So this is a key point here. You've got interior designer making sure that things are working together on locations of doors and windows, but also the electrical and lighting to achieve your goals. Sometimes interior designers will do the [00:21:00] electrical lighting. Sometimes they work with the lighting designer or with the architect because you have certain pieces of art that you want highlighted that nobody's thought about except you and your interior designer. So you can see there's a lot of moving parts now. This is one of the best ways to prevent a lot of the problems that you hear about in construction. It's proper planning and proper design.

This coordination—this is where the real magic happens. So all these digital files I talked about—the architect's digital files, the structural engineer's digital files, the mechanical, electrical and plumbing designer's digital files or the architect's files—are overlaid on top of the architectural plans. So what'll happen is the structural engineer will come back to the architect and say, "Okay, here are your structural plans, your instruction manual. Here's the skeleton of your home to build your [00:22:00] project," and the architect will then compare those drawings and details to his or her plans and how they designed it and overlays those together to make sure that there's no conflicts.

It's very possible that an engineer reduced the size of a window or didn't allow a certain aspect of a project that the architect wanted. It's possible that all of a sudden posts appeared in the middle of the kitchen, where the island's gonna go. There's all kinds of things that an engineer, a structural engineer can do to a project that if not actually investigated, can show up way too late during construction, when you walk in one day and see the window's no longer six feet. It's four feet over the kitchen sink and nobody [00:23:00] spotted that when the structural engineer resubmitted to the architect. So this is a big one, right? This is a really big one. And believe it or not, this happens more often than not, and that can be a function of poor communication between the architect and the structural engineer.

That could be poor communication from the interior designer to the architect, meaning the interior designer said, "Hey, I'd really like this window to be six feet if we can do it, because then I wanna move it over a foot and a half because that balances out with the vanity design." There's all kinds of things like this. And if that didn't get translated onto the plans and then eventually into the structural engineer, and then it circles back. This is what happens, and this is why a lot of people run into problems. So you as a homeowner, just making you aware of this coordinating effort that happens most of the time behind the scenes is really good for you to know. So here we go with the, now you know a little bit more than you didn't know. Now you know what you need to know so that you can make [00:24:00] sure and ask some of the questions that are important. Because you're the one that's eventually gonna be looking at all this.

So you can ask questions like, "Were there any changes that the structural engineer proposed or recommended or required that we had to change on the architectural plans that I would care about? Are there any posts or walls moved or windows eliminated or shrunk down?" These are the kind of things that you can ask to prevent the problems in the future because ultimately you're the one who has to deal with all the problems and may have to live with things that you're not really that satisfied with.

The design development stage that we're talking about today is this whole orchestrating, coordinating and there's a lot of things going on while all these other consultants are involved. Eventually the mechanical design will come back, whether it's through your architect, through a mechanical contractor or a mechanical [00:25:00] designer. Somebody's gotta design it. And if nobody's designing it, you've got bigger problems. And I gotta tell you, that happens way too often where an unqualified architect or designer just drops the furnace in the basement and then doesn't do anything else, and just says somebody will figure out where all the ductwork goes.

This is a really big problem because who makes compromises? If the mechanical contractor cannot tell where all the ductwork goes, they're making decisions on the fly to design the system. That could mean minimizing or compromising your comfort level in the home. That could mean seeing strange chases and drop-down ceilings and soffits that you didn't think you needed, that now you do need, so that means your ceiling height in your basement's now seven feet instead of nine feet or whatever. So if these aren't [00:26:00] being designed properly, the equipment may not be sized properly. Ducting may not be sized properly. You are making compromises on comfort and style and aesthetics. This happens a lot in this business, and I don't understand why. It needs to be coordinated and overseen by your architect and for you to know now that's a possibility. That's the goal here, right?

So what happens in a more sophisticated design experience is the mechanical design is submitted back to the architect and they overlay that over their plans, and then also the structural plan to make sure that the big cold air return, that needs to be 12, 16, 18 inches, is being put in a place where nobody's making any compromises from those things I mentioned earlier, the ductwork, getting the duct [00:27:00] work up to the second floor. Where did the engineer design that? Or who designed that? How are we getting the ductwork from the upstairs bedroom units? Where's that? "We just decided to use this whole section of the closet. I don't wanna do that. I want my storage. We decided to make a little column detail that wasn't part of the original design." This is the problem that we run into all the time, and we don't want to do that if we don't have to. Now, sometimes you have to make compromises, but knowing during the design process that the compromises or the options are presented to you to make that choice.

Do you want this closet or that closet taken up? Do you want to reduce the size of your walk-in pantry so we can get the cold air return up and out? You are involved in the process or your architect's involved in the process, not making these concessions in the middle of construction where possibly materials have been ordered that could get [00:28:00] affected by reducing the size of a certain space for these things to work out. It's really important that you address mechanical. Same thing applies to electrical and plumbing design. Where's the big drain pipe coming down? "It's gonna come down this wall over here that's behind my headboard in my new bedroom. Do I really wanna listen to all that? Let's put it over here. That's the dining room. I don't want to hear drain water coming down while I'm entertaining with a dinner party." You're getting where I'm going here. It's who's thinking about this and who's making it a priority?

So you as a homeowner now know that if there's a structural beam in the way of where you wanted a skylight, now you know, and now you can make a decision. Let's move the skylight. Let's move the beam. Let's all get our heads together and make sure that we are thinking all of this stuff through. So the big ones are structural design, [00:29:00] mechanical, electrical, plumbing design, interior design—those are all the elements that will drive the design. Your architect's job is to orchestrate all of these, and you're part of the orchestra. You are the one making the decisions on this. So that is the big emphasis of the episode today—this is what happens during design development. There's a lot of moving parts. Materials are starting to be looked at.

You are now being presented hopefully 3D renderings of some of the materials that you think you like for the outside of your home and maybe even the inside of your home. Electrical lighting design is being accomplished so that you can discuss where all of your fixtures are going to go. We're all working towards the plan pages that you need to do some analysis, and that's what we're gonna talk about next.

So segment three is about how all of this work [00:30:00] is evolving into actual physical plan pages for your project that you're gonna need. So remember, those beautiful concept drawings from your schematic design phase—they're about to undergo a dramatic transformation, right? They're evolving from all those pretty pictures that were plastered all over the place and talked about and considered, and that were helping you visualize, and now we're gonna be moving into more technical documents that you are going to care about when it comes down to making some really big decisions on your project.

So in the early stage of schematic design, we did some early budgeting. Way back in the discovery phase, if you recall it. If you haven't, go back and listen to that. We did some analysis and some thoughts about how much we want to invest in the project. Forget about what do I want—how much do I have? How much do I want to spend? That's [00:31:00] the original goal. At the end of schematic design, we did a little bit of more detailed analysis, but still at a higher level by square footage. Because now we have data points such as the square footage, the specifications of some of the materials, the options that we want to consider.

Now we're working towards the next level, which I call budget checkpoint two, which will be coming a little bit later. And we'll be talking about that because this is how we're going to really get to the nut of it. This is the missing link that a lot of homeowners and architects and designers blow through and just keep on chugging away only to actually sabotage your own project. At the end of design development, you're sitting here feeling great and then you price the project out.

All right, so let's talk about the deliverable, the outcome of this stage of design development, and let's remember that we're in the middle [00:32:00] of design development. We've already talked about step one, where you've made some of the commitments in design development. Sorry, I don't mean to confuse you. So we've had the three stepping stones of design: schematic design development, construction documents. We're in this little mini-series of design development, the core part of design work that matters most to you. And we are working our way towards actually getting some data for you to make informed decisions. And let's talk about what you need in order to do that in this middle of the design development and where we're going with this stage.

So what you're gonna need is you're gonna need a certain level of plan pages, design work in order to be able to intelligently converse with your architect and potential builders for your project. Because our goal is to figure out how much we think this thing's gonna cost before we go real [00:33:00] deep into the next step. So a site plan is a common name of a plan page on a project. So what I'm talking about when I say plan pages, I'm talking about—people used to call 'em blueprints. These are pages that are often 24 inch wide by 36 inch long. This is that roll of plans that you see on projects that you are now creating for yourself. A site plan. And sometimes in the world of architectural design it's an acronym of S-01 or SP. There's different acronyms they use, and it's usually at the beginning part of the compiled plan pages, and it's often in a custom home project, you could have 20 to 40, 50 pages of plans or sheets within a plan set for a project.

And the site plan's usually in the beginning and this shows [00:34:00] the exact placement of your structures on your property with measurements. This shows utility connections, driveway locations, drainage considerations. The civil plans are probably still in development here, but you've got something to work off of and then you've got a site plan. The civil plan is usually done by a civil engineer, sometimes by the architect that is incorporated into the site plan or sometimes two separate sections of a set of plans. Regardless, you need to be able to show your builder, an excavation contractor, or your builder's excavation contractor, what needs to happen. Where is the building going to go? How deep are we digging? Where are the retaining walls? This is, even at this stage, it's way more than we've had prior in these episodes for somebody to sink their teeth into [00:35:00] to know, "Oh, there's 48 feet of retaining wall that's 36 inches tall. There's this amount of dirt that I need to move out of where the site is going to be called a cut, and then I need to fill over here."

These are the areas and details that you need to be able to get some kind of budgetary number. You also use the site plan to make sure that you've complied with the setbacks from the property lines and all the other aspects of conforming to the planning department that we have to—I've spoken about in the past—setbacks, the size of the home, the floor area ratio, the amount of square footage relative to the lot, the height of the structures. These plans start to give somebody who's gonna build this thing the idea.

The next thing is the architectural set, often beginning with the letter A on plans, and down the road here, I'm gonna have a whole segment [00:36:00] on understanding architectural plans, sets, and sheets. But what you need right now is you need floor plans, precise room dimensions, sizes of windows and doors. Even where there's built-ins that are gonna be placed, you are going to start assembling the material specifications and finish schedules, and then obviously the mechanical, electrical and lighting design that comes into play in the architectural pages or separate consultant pages. This gives a builder a sense of size, square footage, linear footage of foundation. For example, linear footage of trims and moldings and all kinds of things. When you go to talk to a builder and you say what's a budget for a project with nothing in your hand, you are gonna get all kinds of answers. Now you're gonna say what would you think a budget would be for my 3,800 square foot home that you're seeing [00:37:00] here on these drawings with a site plan and whatnot?

So the next one that architect generates is called elevations. Elevations are a separate sheet or sheets of a plan set that show two-dimensional drawings of your home from the outside, and that is the front of the home, the side of the home, the back of the home. This helps anybody who's gonna be building the project understand the scale, the mass, the locations of windows and doors, the sizes of trims, everything that they need to know to be able to understand what this home looks like when they go to build it. And this is also where an architect can specify materials. So you may see indicators on elevations of what materials they want to use for the siding, for the masonry, for the exterior trim, for the roofing material. And this helps the builder understand. Remember, we're [00:38:00] still at—we're not at that early stage. Now we're in the core part of design, but we're not finished yet. But the goal here is for you to be able to see what's going on and for a potential builder to see what's going on.

Another thing that should be included in the design development stage of drawings and details is 3D renderings. 3D renderings help everybody understand orientation, the location of the buildings, the mass and scale of the project, and this helps get their mind into the project. Remember, very good builders and contractors are already starting to build your home in their head. They start to understand excavation. Contractors are great at this. They can see the site plan, the civil plan, the architectural plans, and they can start building this project in their head about what they're going to be doing, the sequence of events and start planning the project out. That's [00:39:00] one of the biggest valuable items that you are bringing in by bringing a professional builder into a project. So the elevations are really important.

Now, of course, as I mentioned before, the structural aspect is probably the most important. This is gonna be one of the biggest line items in a project for you when it comes to cost, and also drives all kinds of design elements, like I've mentioned before. So in the structural pages, now at this stage of the game, at the very least, you should have preliminary structural plans, and those are often identified as what we call the S pages. So S-01, 02, 03, 04, 05. And they usually work from the ground up. So usually start with a foundation plan, and this is where you start to see the details, the structural components that go inside your concrete, and also the type of concrete, the specifications for the concrete, the [00:40:00] rebar size, the metal that goes inside your concrete, the size of the foundation, meaning the height of the foundation, the width of the footings, all of that aspect is important for a builder to understand when they go to price out the project.

The other thing that a structural engineer has done is they've analyzed the soils report that has been provided way early on in the project, and they've designed the foundation accordingly. Structural engineers also get involved in the waterproofing requirements and drainage requirements, and they usually work in concert with the civil engineer and also the architects. Sometimes the architect will focus on the waterproofing elements that need to happen. Let's say you're building a home with a basement. That is an aspect that needs to be seriously addressed for proper management of the intrusion or hopefully no intrusion of water into your structure, whether you're doing a basement or sometimes even just a regular [00:41:00] raised foundation. Nowadays we're starting to see waterproofing elements being applied to the exterior of the foundation. We're starting to see insulation applied to the exterior of the foundation, believe it or not, especially in colder climates. You're also looking at where the utilities are coming into the structure, and that's all part of the foundation plan because sometimes penetrations have to occur through the concrete, and that has to be designed and engineered. You can't just drill through a foundation anywhere you want as a plumbing contractor or an electrical contractor, or even a mechanical contractor. Those are considered during this design phase and indicated on the plans.

And then of course, the framing plan. So the framing plan is your walls, your floor, your walls, your ceilings, your roofs, your beams, every aspect of the skeleton of the home. The structural engineer will be specifying all the [00:42:00] sizes of the lumber, the thicknesses, the heights, the specifications for the subfloor and the wall framing, whether it's two-by-six wall, two-by-four wall, the plywood sheathing on the outside, all the beams that make the interconnections, the roof framing structure, the member sizes, the slope, the pitch all this type of stuff. The engineer is specifying the materials to achieve the architect's drawings down to every single nail specification, screw, brackets, hardware that needs to go into the project. All of that specified on a structural set of plans. Sometimes structural engineering plans cost the same or sometimes even more than the architectural drawings. It's really crazy. So it's really important that you have that in this design development stage. Now, a lot of times it's towards the end of the [00:43:00] design development stage, and that's what we're working our way towards. But you're gonna need this if you want somebody to analyze the structure and the cost for you.

So framing plans are a real big part of these plan sheets that you're assembling so that you can then go to a contractor, and of course the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing pages. Somebody has to do that. Somebody has to say where all the fixtures are. Somebody has to determine the size of the ducting and the piping and where they come into the house and how they're distributed throughout the house, where all the vent piping is going, et cetera. This is something that the more detailed, the better. The more your builder and contractor will respect you as a homeowner and an architect and you'll be able to get a lot more accurate costs and a lot of assumptions aren't being made. So that is a big part of what we're working towards, is [00:44:00] creating these sheets within a plan set.

And what I just spoke about are the MEP pages, and sometimes you'll see 'em titled that—M1, E1, P1. This is the thing that you need to know or need to have in order to accomplish the goals.

All right, and lastly, what we're looking for in this middle stage of the design process is interior design elements that are important for the project that you'll need to know when it comes to pricing out a project. So what I've looked for in all the years I've been doing this is I've been looking for a few things from an interior designer, and this is still evolving during the design process, but a lot of people don't really realize that an interior designer can contribute at this stage of the game, even back in the schematic design. Like I've mentioned before, having that element involved in the project is going to position you to be able to visualize your materials for that matter, [00:45:00] but also to do some pricing out at the end of this design development stage so that you can then make informed decisions.

So an interior designer—a big part of what they do is they create what I call a finish floor plan. Now, this may not be as common in the world of design, but I've really found it beneficial. And that is the floor plan pages. So visualize yourself looking over your home in a 2D view. And the interior designer documents all of the flooring materials that go in each room. They document all the transitions from different floors to different rooms. And they document things like the location of light fixtures that are relative to their kitchen and bath design. And they specify all of the materials that go by looking from above down. So it could be decorative beams, it could be [00:46:00] built-in cabinetry that goes in certain areas. Those are just some examples of what can be communicated to a flooring contractor, a builder, right? So that is the idea here when somebody says, "Oh, I want flooring here. Where is it? How much is it? How much is there of it? Where does it stop and start?" Those kind of things can really help people visualize and also price out a project.

Material specifications are really important for an interior designer to do for you so that you can price out the project. The other aspect of interior designer is interior elevation. So architects will do interior elevations in a project as more of a standard view if you want them to do it, but interior designers, what they do, qualified [00:47:00] interior designers—remember, I'm not talking about decorators that are just helping you pick out materials, but I'm also talking about interior designers that are technically competent, that can actually do drawings both in 2D interior elevations and 3D renderings of the actual colors and materials that you're using. We're killing two birds with one stone. Here we are looking at the technical aspects of a project. For example, when an interior designer does the kitchen and bath designs, they'll draw an elevation of the sink wall and they'll draw every single individual cabinet and the details of each cabinet door and drawer face. They will place measurements on the elevations to show everybody exactly where the sink cabinet goes relative to the kitchen window relative to other lighting fixtures that might be [00:48:00] suspended over an island. They'll have dimensions of each individual cabinet, center lines to all the appliances and sink locations.

And by the way, this is where having an interior designer involved as early as possible can influence the architectural design and then ultimately the structural design. So if you see where I'm going here, bringing them in as early as possible helps convey, or I should say, helps protect you when it comes to the aesthetics and also the cost. So interior elevations of fireplaces, kitchens, islands, vanities, built-ins, special recess ceiling details, how they interface with the fireplace, fireplace mantles, the mantle design, and then they will specify all of those materials that they've drawn. A big one is tile patterns, right? So interior elevations [00:49:00] in a shower in a primary brand new primary bathroom. The tile detail—it's an unbelievable amount of time and effort and importance that goes into the tile design.

Now, a lot of people will just say, "I have my tile guy figure it out." Tile guys can actually not be too bad at that. But tile setters don't think about the project holistically, right, of the entire home. They're thinking about the one little cubicle they're in, and sizes and proportions and configurations. But a lot of people do dump that onto the tile setter, or sometimes they dump that onto the tile supplier and they're not bad either. But an interior designer has a broader perspective, right? They understand the whole home, a holistic approach. They understand all of the resources and options they have in their local community for suppliers, [00:50:00] and these are the people usually that you want to be doing the drawings and details of the tile design.

Okay. So this is a really big one, and how that tile backsplash interfaces with the countertop and the countertop edge detail. The more of this information that you have to hand to a builder, to hand to a tile setter, to hand to a cabinet maker, the more they're gonna respect you and your project, the more accurate your pricing is going to be. I can't emphasize this enough that having an interior designer on a project can really save your butt, basically. Now there's a lot of homeowners that will say, "I'll do all that myself, and I'll wait till we have the permits and we're getting started. Then I'll start picking out all the colors." But I don't think that's a really good idea. So that's what we're talking about today is we're in the middle of the design development stage. We've talked about the early [00:51:00] stage of design development, committing to certain plans and options and ideas. We've now talked about the coordination of all the people that come into play on a project and how important certain elements of that are.

So, today's key message, okay, is the specialist coordination is one of the major keys to success by overlaying and analyzing, and your architect's supposed to be doing all that, and I just want you to know that's supposed to be happening so you can ask the questions to make sure that there's minimal surprises. There's always gonna be some. Your plan pages of your project are starting to evolve now. You're starting to see printouts and you're starting to see full plan pages. That is your instruction manual. Bringing in the professionals at the right time [00:52:00] is absolutely crucial so that we're not in the middle of construction trying to resolve problems when they could have been thought of early on.

So you as a homeowner are wanting to understand this. I want you to understand this now so that you can keep your eye on the ball. You're not supposed to know everything and I know we're getting into some more technical stuff here, but I want you to know that these are the things that are gonna be happening. Interior design integration is absolutely imperative. That's one of today's key messages that can really help link the original inspirations that you had with the final outcome so that you can be the one plastering everything on the internet of your project and how great your project is.

So some action items for you today: ask your architect about their consultant coordination process and timeline. Request to see examples of completed plan page sets from similar projects. Understand how interior design will be integrated with other [00:53:00] consultants and confirm that all specialists will be working from shared current information. So everybody's working together and you can be asking questions like, "I see these plan sets that are from a similar project. What was one of the biggest challenges that happened on this job? Who was the contractor and builder on this project? Would they be a good person for me to talk to about building my project?" Then go over and talk to them for a few reasons. Interview them about potentially helping you in a project, but also ask 'em how did it go? How were the plans?

So you're not just a homeowner anymore. Now you're leading a team of specialists, or I should say you're like the general manager overseeing the coaching staff, right? You're watching what they're doing. You don't necessarily know how to coach somebody how to hit a baseball [00:54:00] because you're the GM or you're the president of the team, but you can see what's happening. You can understand the basics and really understand the results, right? Is he hitting the ball? Is he not hitting the ball? Do I have my ductwork poking out of the ceiling in weird spots? So you don't have to understand every technical detail, but you do need to ensure they're all working together toward your vision. Ask questions, request updates, and stay engaged in the coordinating process. Don't just wash your hands of it. A lot of clients do that. A lot of homeowners do that. They just expect everything to be taken care of, and that's in a perfect world, yes, that's what you should be able to do, but don't count on it. Get a feeling early on and then start asking some questions. You can always back off if you feel like, "Hey, this person's got it right. I feel like they've got my back. They're my advocates."

So the next episode, and this will be hopefully the last part of the design development phase, we're gonna dive into the heart of design development, what I call the three-component [00:55:00] specification system that protects your investment. This is an area that gets deferred way too much. It's often overlooked, and I'm gonna bring it to your attention so that you can take the steps and ask the right questions. We will cover materials, equipment, and scope of work—those three categories that need to be addressed, and I'm gonna talk about each one of those and why each one of those matter and work together with each other and really ultimately will help you prepare to go through that budget checkpoint number two. Or you may even be able to get an actual construction estimate at the end of the design development stage before you actually hire your architect to complete the construction documents and start permit processing, right? You'll be able to make informed decisions about the project and a big one out of all of this that I'm talking [00:56:00] about today, these steps I'm talking about will minimize a lot of the surprises during construction, such as change orders.

You hear a lot about change orders. If things weren't thought out early enough, specified enough, designed enough, ultimately, you're going to get change orders on a project. You're gonna walk into your home during construction and be surprised about what you're seeing and not necessarily in a good way. This is the things that I'm talking about today. So remember, great projects aren't built by individual experts working in isolation. They're created by teams of specialists working in coordination toward a shared vision. You are building that team now. You're gonna depend on your architect or your residential designer to be the orchestrator, but you are still part of that orchestra. [00:57:00] Maybe you're at the head of the orchestra, I don't know, and you're building that team and trust the process, stay engaged and know that you got this. And I'm hoping the information today makes you feel that way, that you've got at least a lot better understanding of what's going on.

So that is my mission today, is to get your head in the game when it comes to what is happening behind the scenes with the specialist, with the coordination, what's really important, what matters to you. And then we're gonna get into the real nitty-gritty details the next episode. So I'm Bill Reid. I'm your home building coach from The Awakened Homeowner, and I will see you on the next episode.