Articles
Materials, selection & how we build
Notes from the field on how we build: project guidance, material comparisons, and the occasional how-to for the trade.
Church and religious facility construction
A church or religious facility asks a building to do several genuinely different jobs at once: hold a large assembly comfortably, support activities well beyon…
Read the article →Auto dealership construction
An auto dealership is really two very different buildings joined together: a showroom built to a manufacturer's brand standard, and a service facility built ar…
Read the article →Fitness and gym build-outs
A gym or fitness studio takes an ordinary commercial shell and asks it to handle loads, activity levels, and equipment most retail or office tenants never come…
Read the article →Car wash construction: site work and equipment coordination
A car wash looks like a straightforward building from the road, but the site work and equipment coordination underneath it carry more of the project's real com…
Read the article →Dental office construction: what is different
A dental office shares a lot with general medical build-out, but treating it as simply a smaller version of a medical suite misses several requirements that ar…
Read the article →What a punch list is and why it matters
A punch list sounds like a minor administrative step near the end of a project, and that reputation undersells what it actually is: the last real checkpoint be…
Read the article →How Texas summer heat affects a construction schedule
Texas summers are long, and the heat they bring is not just a discomfort issue for crews, it is a real scheduling variable that shows up in how fast work actua…
Read the article →6 mistakes owners make when budgeting a commercial project
Most budget problems on a commercial project trace back to a handful of decisions made before construction ever starts, not to anything that went wrong once cr…
Read the article →Design-build versus a traditional general contractor: what is the difference
Owners sometimes assume "design-build" and "general contractor" describe two competing kinds of contractor, when the real distinction is about who holds the co…
Read the article →What drives change order costs on a commercial project
Every commercial project runs into change orders, and every owner who has been through one has a rough sense that they cost more than they should. What is less…
Read the article →Senior living and assisted living construction costs
Senior living and assisted living construction costs get compared to standard multifamily numbers more often than they should be, because the buildings can loo…
Read the article →Gas station and convenience store construction cost per square foot
A gas station and convenience store project spends a disproportionate share of its budget on things a customer never sees: what is underground, what regulates…
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