If you’ve ever been a part of a hotel project that carries a brand association – there are rules.
And rules, and rules, and suggestions and recommendations and undocumented design intent and things buried in the drawing set & specifications… If there’s a mistake in the branded design drawings or specifications that you’re using in the project – the GC & subs on the project will find them.
Spoiler – the design documents that you get aren’t 100% clear with intent, and there are mistakes in there.
In the 6 or so years I spent modeling, tweaking, VE-ing, setting up, and doing DDs, CDs & CA on branded hotel projects, most of these undocumented gems came to light. Sometimes at the least opportune moments to the project – for instance, during brand walk-thru during framing the project. (Yes, that’s happened)
It helps to have the ability to empathize in these situations. The ability to step outside of these kind of situations and see the world from someone else’s point of view is a strength in those kind of ordeals – even though the finger of blame is pointed at you.
The Players:
From the GC side – those guys are going great guns to deliver the product. They’ve got a schedule to beat. They’ve got pay applications, delivery scheduling, sub negotiations, coordination, keeping any under-performing members of the assembled team in line, safety inspections, builder inspections, and the rules they need to follow change on a daily basis. A million moving pieces, and they’ve got to hit all of the key dates or they catch as much hell as anyone else does.
With the amount of time I’ve spent ‘under the bus’ and blamed for everything and anything on some of these projects – I still have a healthy level of respect for what these guys are able to make happen. If you really think about everything that it takes to physically manifest a 4-8 story hotel into vacant space… its a minor miracle sometimes.
To translate this into the design side of the equation – Picture it like this: You’re on a deadline. You’ve got a loose team of people who may or may not be on your project – and a deadline that’s expanded in scope with the last 3 meetings without the deliverable date moving. Your PC crashes (again), and the 3-4 fresh people the project has just inherited from a remote office proceeds to break half the groups in the model you’re working on by changing door parameters to work with the schedule they use locally… fun right? The last thing you want/need/or expect is an unforeseen design change given an error that was copied into the project from source documents.
Whether you’re moving studs or pixels – my job and the GCs position wasn’t a whole lot different in that environment. Pressure is pressure no matter the source.
When the Brand inspection comes thru and points out a list of 80+ things that need revision – a whole pile of project nuances, (along with half of my marbles) spill out onto the floor.
But, but… Where is that in the brand documents?
If there was one thing that I believe is deeply needed on brand documentation, drawings especially, is narrative notation on room features. If there’s a reason that something is the way that it is – note it?
Like everything else in life – nothing is perfect, but without a line to the intended design outcome – there’s inherit risk in sourcing or reproducing design drawings without an understanding of the nuances involved.
I know that there’s a percentage of prototype hotel projects out there that start with teams just submitting the original brand drawings. Based on my experiences, I’m curious how those projects go.
Generally speaking – learning all of this stuff on the fly, on the jobsite and as a surprise to all parties involved – is way too late in the process. Believe me – I’m not asking for the moon here. Just notes.
I’m not blaming Brand here either. Those PMs are managing 50+ projects at a time and constantly flying around the country. They’ve got a massive undertaking to keep all their interests covered. Those boiler-plate reports that you get on a project are done at 30,000 ft on the way to the next project.
Its understood that there are no balconies in your hotel design – you can ignore the comments on the balconies in the report you just got. They have the same ‘cover your ass’ things that everyone else on the team has with corporate.
Additionally – running 50+ projects at a time, there’s no way in hell I’m going to get timely response to a question of ‘What was the design intent in this situation? It’s dimensioned differently in 3 different places…’ or ‘What’s the replacement tile color selection in this area? the one in the spec isn’t being made anymore…’ It’s just not in the cards to get information turnaround in a short timeframe when you multiply that across 50 projects in an 8-hour window.
I’ve been on that side too. On no sleep, writing field verification reports on a plane… carries an added degree of difficulty when you’re 6′ 3″, crammed into an aisle seat at the person in front of you just slammed the seatback into the bridge of your nose because they want to nap.
Some brands have better documentation than others. I’m not going to name names. I have favorites, I have encountered things that make me question corporate sanity… but most of them have been weaned out in subsequent document set revisions.
I’ve also been on the fast-track side of delivering a prototype hotel package under the looming deadline of a conference and brand roll-out so I also know what that entails. Let’s just say it harkens back to a quote I threw into one of these posts about alligators and a swamp.
Regardless of the backstory or empathetic understanding of the position players in the room… the same thing applies:
I say that with emphasis, because in those moments – I’m generally not a happy camper. There are things you trust, things you shield yourself against, things you mentally prepare for… and when one of those things jumps columns when you’re already under pressure – its unsettling. 80+ design revisions had just landed on me and the project could stop if things aren’t turned around quickly. Most of which could’ve been avoided with one design intent conversation or a document/model walk-thru with a rep in an hour or two.
Now, to qualify this – it’s been said of me and to me that I’m ‘up my own ass’ with the level of information I include in a BIM model (hehehe Thanks Matt) – but its all with the desired purpose to convey as much information as is possible to produce a thought-out design solution and to ease the pressure of deliverables. Construction drawings shouldn’t be 6-8 weeks of filled regions & linework workarounds, its smart tagging the stuff that’s modeled and linking to details.
BUT – When that thought-out design solution is based on only 80% knowledge of the full story and not covered during design reviews to avoid the situation… Well, no matter how many times I can counter blame in the job trailer post meeting, its still my fault in the eyes of the client, right?
The finger of blame strikes pretty hard sometimes.
For me, the design phase is supposed to uncover all of those pesky little problems before they’re problems. That’s one of the key reasons that I’ve been a huge proponent of BIM.
Starting way back with Softplan, and Softdesk add-ons with AutoCAD, moving to Architectural Desktop and Revit I always have a view open of the area that I’m working on in 3D. There are no unforeseen design opportunities that pop-up during construction when you can stand inside the room you’re developing and look around at how things meet. Explore it BEFORE you’re standing on site.
All of this has the primary focus to ensure project deliverables are correct. Its not fun when that rug gets pulled out from under you during construction. For anyone on the team.
For me personally, looking stupid and unforced errors aren’t something that I enjoy.
It comes back to the Rules of the Game. Aesthetics, Physics, Finance, Municipal + Building & Life Safety Code… and in corporate/branded projects – desired outcomes to maintain user experience based on additional criteria.
My assumption is that the developer wants the most bang for their buck. Understandable. They don’t want to pay for any space that isn’t 100% necessary to get a return for investors. I’d want to be sure that I wasn’t paying for 600k square feet when 500k would work.
Contractors don’t want hiccups. They want clean drawings so that they can work their goals. Any outside change to that comes at a cost to someone. Shoe on the other foot – when the design has been signed off and more design changes come out, I’m not thrilled either – and usually its only a couple of people that I have to motivate to make the change – not 20-30.
Brand wants the aesthetic & experiential appeal to match the culture of their brand and increase marketability. Fair. I mean if my name was going on something that I wasn’t personally producing – I’d make damned sure that there’s a layer of quality control on it.
Architects want to create an environment where all these things are possible, and pay the rent while accomplishing that.
In developer projects, that will mean creating value by saving space and increasing perceived value to the client without expanding budget. I can get more stuff in less space. Hire me.
Conversely in branded projects – most everything is presented as design minimums, with limited explanation of underlying cause/reason.
So the problem becomes: How to shave space in an already minimally designed room to imply savings for the developer? In most cases, its threading the needle. Front end design work takes place without the furniture in mind while brand is all about their FF&E placement. Enter Marlow’s pile of Revit Tools.
For me, the design phase is supposed to uncover all of those pesky little problems before they’re problems. That’s one of the key reasons that I’ve been a huge proponent of BIM.
Starting way back with Softplan, and Softdesk add-ons with AutoCAD, moving to Architectural Desktop and Revit I always have a view open of the area that I’m working on in 3D. There are no unforeseen design opportunities that pop-up during construction when you can stand inside the room you’re developing and look around at how things meet. Explore it BEFORE you’re standing on site.
All of this has the primary focus to ensure project deliverables are correct. Its not fun when that rug gets pulled out from under you during construction. For anyone on the team.
For me personally, looking stupid and unforced errors aren’t something that I enjoy.
It comes back to the Rules of the Game. Aesthetics, Physics, Finance, Municipal + Building & Life Safety Code… and in corporate/branded projects – additional desired outcomes to maintain user experience.
During my tenure as either Project Manager/Project Architect or as PA/Revit guy running interference for Interior Design – I ran into repeated unforced errors from front-end design. The design from either in-house or out-of-house architects included some common errors and things that I’d uncovered during ‘deep dives’ into the documents. As I stated above – others happened live and in living color.
As a ‘self defense’ move – I developed the Revit families for a brand in order to smooth out the design in-house design hiccups when it came to room layouts. If those working under front-end deliverables were armed with the proper tools – it would lessen the necessary step of redesigning the building so that it worked as advertised. I also kept a red-lined copy of brand documents, and did short write-up explanations of other nuanc-y things for internal knowledge sharing.
Probably one of the most common things I’ve seen trying to shave space is out of this type of situation:
The guest room is a listed collection of design minimums, based on furniture size and placement.
The prelim design is based on the overall square footage of the room, and not the furniture configuration. Invariably the prelim design team will attempt to shave space while space planning. See the issue forming?
In a situation like this, you’ve got a manufactured vanity, centered along a wall. For this designer, this is an easy 3″ pickup in the square footage of the room. Surely you can reduce that tolerance
The reason that you can’t actually do that, isn’t even in this drawing. It goes back to a detail, not referenced in this plan at the front end of the set.
It has to do with the opposite wall and the relationship between the tub or shower unit, and the sliding door panel & frame.
If you look at this relationship and do all the math, we’ve got a 32″ minimum door opening + a 38″ minimum door panel (to cover the door frame when closed) + 1″ of clearance before you slam the door panel against the wall pocket.
With the depth of the tub/shower unit + doors, framing and sneak a towel hook in there – the overall dimension of the room is established.
Its got nothing to do with the vanity, but that’s not really clear unless you take a look at the entire scenario.
Now lets say you get that prelim design package as your next project and the entire building has to find another 6-12″ of space in 180+ rooms. The building has to grow a foot or more to accommodate that. Oops.
Things like this aren’t 100% clearly covered in the documents, and if you’re like me – I didn’t tag along on conversations with brand when you get to tour model rooms.
Either way – its now something that needs to get fixed, for the 10th time that year on the same project type. It adds up.
That’s just one example of one item that came up in multiple branded projects. Multiply that across an office doing that 50x a year. My little ‘self defense’ move was meant to combat front-end design errors and live within the heavily nuanced design language.
Let’s say you’ve got a 10-story hotel project, with all the public spaces and food service on the top floor. Great ambiance overlooking whatever city the project is located in, skybar, etc. Right?
You’ve done all the legwork, you’ve got code compliance dialed in and all the life-safety numbers work out for egress off of that level… Passes code review, the permit is pending and brand hits you with a late-stage review comment that’s buried in their specifications.
In that condition, brand requires that you meet a greater code requirement. Your stairs now have to be 12″ wider than anticipated. It’s in all their documentation but now you’re changing the building footprint, and have to invent space somewhere within the room matrix to accommodate this nuance. I’ve seen it happen. A revision was triggered to the overall project on all levels at a time when the entire project was in question.
Minimum Clear dimensions are more like guidelines than actual rules. In situations like this, its helpful to work this one backward from the door detail. Trust.
At a minimum, make sure the Revit family group you’re using has a frame or trim component in the door family. You’ll understand why.
Believe it or not – resolving this relationship with a clean & buildable solution will impact the entire room layout in both directions. That’s how tightly this stuff is configured.
Even if your framer is a zero-tolerance wizard with a nail gun, the door is pinned into a situation with 2 adjacent walls, additional intersecting closet door trim and a pile of finish issues that develop, just with this detail. Multiply that by 130+ rooms, and its a thing.
In these situations, knowledge (however its gained) is valuable. Some of it is growing pains – hopefully marching toward tightening up deliverables and a prosperous future in your projects .
For me, I tried solving some of these issues by developing design tools for front-end problem solving that maintained usability thru Construction Docs.
It became a portion of my job. Every time a new branded project was being explored – I was on it for a couple weeks. In preparation for this project, I’d grab the specs, brand design drawings trying to gain as much information as I could to satisfy the project criteria. Usually that meant the at-home development of the entire FF&E package.
Other popular problems included:
I suppose my point is this: Hospitality as a design market is a lot more complex & nuanced than people give it credit for. Make sure you read the fine print. The possibility for potential design issues abounds if you don’t have a solid understanding of the rulebook. Gaining that understanding at late stages in the game costs everyone on the team. Fiscally or by reputation or both.
When you’re out in the world, have a look. There are few spaces more compact an efficient than the space behind a counter in a coffee shop, bar or in a restaurant kitchen. Just take a look back there next time you’re waiting for your beverage or a meal. Everything in those spaces has a defined purpose and interaction zone. The same thing holds true for the hotel up the street. Unplanned spaces are very rare.
I will say that I’ve never worked in patient care facilities & hospitals (just blood labs & research spaces), but I imagine that to be an even greater nuanced game that I’m familiar with. The systems and circulation and behind the scenes composition of that collection of spaces has to dwarf anything that I’ve been a part of.
In any case, regardless of experience or specialty – navigating these waters and uncovering the project variables to reduce ‘uh oh’ on the jobsite is a valuable commodity, that can be solved before the first shove-full of dirt is turned.
Architects, (like the weird guy typing this, who’s hell bent on figuring things out – like its his job to build it) have value. It may not be directly tangible value to anyone else on the team – but it is there.
Granted not everything is a foreseeable circumstance, but there are moves that you can use to mitigate repeating problems across teams, across projects, or across the entire firm.
I’d love to sit down with drawing sets over a beer and a burger with contractors, building inspectors, brand managers, and anyone else who’d lend an opinion to share stories of the common mistakes that they’ve seen, so we can design a path around them to make all new and exciting mistakes.
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough” – Vince Lombardi
Given the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ design approach to nuanced project types, I can see the benefit of modular and prefabricated construction approaches. I mean – I did that digitally to combat the same problems.
With my level of understanding of projects like this – it makes total sense that I would see prefab design solutions pop up on the brand library websites. With a ‘Ok, now build it’ level of interest in the understanding of a project, it would be a benefit to exploring deliverables like that – even though its cutting my profession out almost entirely.
The project solution would be pre-quality controlled, built off-site as a purchasable component, site-delivered for assembly and that pesky back-to-back- bedroom outlet problem entirely avoided with double-stud wall types that are more difficult to suggest in a stick framed project.
I am curious how the assemblies work, how you solve shear, fire separations at corridors, concealed spaces and other portions of the code when you’re stacking boxes – but that requires further exploration.
Half the stuff on my ‘what if’ drawing board right now are projects that can could be developed as prefab units. If anyone reading this has a line on prefab manufacturers – I have questions and the burger and beer discussion would apply here too.
The design nuance topic is something that I’ve wanted to get out there for a while now – just to have the discussion on how others might be solving it or what we can do as a profession to navigate it. Given the times, I have no idea if this is commonplace or if I’m alone on an island with all this.
As always, I’m just sitting over here – making stuff and trying to maintain a toehold on this design profession. If you’re so inclined – leave a like, comment, hit me up on socials and I’ll be here. Making mistakes and designing a way to limit them.
Cheers.
JM
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