The architect inside

The precise version of the claim

This page exists because the imprecise version would be false, and the precise version is more useful anyway.

T-Bone Construction, Inc. is a general contractor that employs a licensed architect, as part of an in-house architectural design team. The company is not itself licensed as an architect, is not an architecture firm, and nothing on this website says otherwise. What we offer is integrated design and construction — design-build — with the design capability inside the company rather than subcontracted to a firm across town.

At a commercial contractor of this size that is genuinely unusual. Most firms this size either build to somebody else’s drawings or retain an architect project by project. Having the capability on the payroll changes the economics of the work in a specific, nameable way, which is what the rest of this page is about.

What it actually removes

Ask any owner what went wrong on their last building and you will mostly hear about change orders. Ask what caused them, and the answer is rarely “we changed our minds”.

It is that the drawings did not say enough, or said something that could not be built as drawn, and the gap surfaced on site with a crew standing in it. Under design-bid-build that gap belongs to nobody: the architect drew what they drew, the contractor bid what was drawn, and the difference is a claim that lands on the owner. Everybody has behaved reasonably and the owner pays.

When the same firm draws and builds, that gap is ours. There is no request for information to send, nobody to argue with about scope, and — this is the part owners most often miss — no commercial incentive to let an ambiguous detail through. A contractor bidding somebody else’s set has that incentive whether or not they ever act on it, because an ambiguity is a potential change order. We do not have it, because the ambiguity is our own drawing and we would be paying to resolve it.

That is a structural fact about the contract rather than a claim about talent, which is why it is worth stating plainly. We are not claiming our drawings are better than anybody else’s. We are claiming that who carries the risk of the gap is different, and that it is not you.

The second thing: speed at the front of the project

The slowest part of a commercial project is almost never the construction. It is the stretch between deciding to build and having a permit, and most of that stretch is handoffs.

An architect produces a set and sends it for pricing. Pricing comes back high. The architect revises. It goes back. That loop takes weeks each time, and it happens two or three times on a normal project, because nobody priced anything while it was being drawn.

With the design team in the building, the loop is a conversation. A system selection gets priced the afternoon it is proposed. A structural idea gets a buildability opinion before it is drawn. The budget is tested continuously rather than discovered in a package, which means a project that is not going to work on the money gets found out at schematic design rather than at bid — and that difference alone is frequently worth more than everything else on this page.

It also means long-lead procurement starts during design. On a project where the electrical switchgear or a specialist door has a lead time exceeding the construction duration, that is not a marginal gain. It is the whole schedule.

What it does not do, and where it costs you

It does not make a building cheaper per square foot than a well-run competitive bid on a complete set. If your project is well-defined, the drawings can genuinely be finished before pricing, and you have the time for a sequential process, competitive bidding will produce the lowest construction number available to you. We would say so, and we bid that work.

It does not shorten the plan review queue, remove the unknowns in the ground, or make a long-lead item arrive sooner.

And it costs you something real: an architect who is contractually independent of the builder. Under design-bid-build your architect’s job during construction is to advocate for your interests against the contractor’s. Under design-build nobody is doing that, because there is only one party. For some owners — particularly a board that wants a separate professional checking the contractor’s work — that is the deciding factor, and it should be.

Owners who want design-build and independent oversight normally solve it with an owner’s representative: a third party, retained by you, who reviews what we produce. We have no objection to that at all, and on a larger project we would suggest it.

How to check it rather than take it

An in-house design team is easy to claim and straightforward to verify. Nothing below needs our permission.

Ask to meet the architect, before you sign anything. Not the estimator, not the project manager. If the design capability is real, there is a person, in the building, who will come to a meeting. If it takes a week to arrange, that tells you something.

Ask for the licence number and check it with the state board. An architect licence is a matter of public record and the check takes a minute. Do this for any firm making this kind of claim.

Ask who stamps the drawings on your project. There is a correct answer and several wrong ones, and the question is a good filter. Some scopes are stamped by an outside consultant for perfectly legitimate reasons — structural and MEP frequently are — and you are entitled to know which is which before you award.

Ask a previous owner when the architect joined the conversation. If the design team is genuinely integrated, the answer is “at the first meeting”. If the answer is “we met them at the end”, the capability exists on an organisation chart rather than in the work.