A Project Profile: Benefits of Front-End-Heavy Due Diligence

Background on this topic from Inspec

Successful restoration starts with thorough due diligence. This article highlights how detailed investigation and project charter development at Bartlett Dining Hall—an iconic 1901 structure—led to efficient scope definition, risk reduction, and a project delivered on time and under budget.

Front-end-heavy means moving the unknowns earlier

Every enclosure project carries a fixed amount of unknown condition: what is behind the cladding, how the original assembly was actually built, where water is entering and how far it has travelled. Those unknowns get resolved eventually. The only real choice is when — during investigation, when the answer costs a probe and a few hours of field time, or during construction, when the answer arrives as a stopped crew, a change order and a schedule extension.

A front-end-heavy approach deliberately loads effort into the period before drawings are issued. More document review, more openings, more testing, more time spent reconciling what the record says against what the building shows. The design phase that follows is shorter and steadier, because the design is being made from measured conditions rather than assumptions.

Building enclosure due diligence is therefore a sequencing decision before it is a budget decision. The same questions get asked on every project. Front-loading simply moves them to the point where the answer can still change the scope, the phasing and the funding request.

Start with the paper record

Before anyone is on a lift, the existing documentation deserves a careful read. Original drawings and specifications, later renovation permits, shop drawings, warranty documents, prior consultant reports, maintenance logs and the owner's own record of complaints all narrow the field of inquiry.

The record rarely matches the building exactly, and the gaps are informative in themselves. A detail drawn but never shop-drawn, a roof replaced without a corresponding flashing change, a curtain wall re-glazed under a different specification — each one is a place worth opening. Document review does not replace field work; it tells you where the field work should go so that a limited number of openings answers the most questions.

Interviews belong in this phase too. Staff who maintain the building usually know which rooms get wet, in which wind direction, and what has already been tried. That history is not evidence on its own, but it is an efficient way to aim the investigation.

Confirm the assumptions in the field

Visual survey establishes the pattern of distress. Exploratory openings establish the cause. Testing establishes whether the assembly performs as designed under water and air pressure, rather than whether it looks acceptable from the ground.

• Exploratory openings at representative and at suspect locations, sized and located so the finding can be extrapolated with reason.
• Water and air testing of windows, joints and terminations to reproduce the reported condition under controlled parameters — see air and water infiltration testing.
• Moisture survey and core sampling of roof assemblies to distinguish wet insulation from sound insulation before a tear-off quantity is written.
• Assembly analysis where condensation, not leakage, is the suspected mechanism; hygrothermal modeling can test a proposed remedy before it is drawn.

Each opening is restored when the work at that location is finished, and the sequence is set around occupancy so that discovery does not become its own disruption. Where the building's overall condition and near-term capital needs are also in question, this work sits naturally alongside a facility condition assessment, so one mobilization serves both the repair project and the capital plan.

Write the scope against what was measured

The output of due diligence is not a stack of photographs. It is a written statement of what the building is, what is wrong with it, which conditions were confirmed and which remain variable — and, from that, an agreed definition of what the project will and will not include.

Getting that definition in writing early does several things at once. It gives the owner a scope that can be funded rather than a wish list. It records the assumptions the design will rest on, so that a later surprise can be measured against a stated expectation. And it settles questions of extent — whole-building versus elevation-by-elevation, replacement versus repair — while they are still cheap to settle.

Turning findings into documents a contractor can price

The value of investigation shows up in the bid set. Known conditions can be drawn and specified. Unknown conditions have to be handled with allowances, unit prices and contractor contingency — all of which bidders price defensively, and all of which the owner pays for whether or not the condition is encountered.

The more the front end has confirmed, the fewer of those instruments the design documents need. Quantities are closer to actual. Details are drawn against a substrate that has been seen rather than presumed. Bidders are pricing the same scope as one another, which makes the bid results comparable and the low number meaningful.

Where a condition genuinely cannot be bounded in advance — rotted framing of unknown extent, for example — a unit price tied to the observed extent converts an open risk into a defined one. The distinction matters: a unit price written after investigation prices a known unit at an estimated quantity, while a unit price written without investigation prices a guess twice.

What changes during construction

Change orders on enclosure work cluster around a short list of causes: deteriorated substrate that was not identified, an existing assembly that differs from the drawings, transitions between trades that were never detailed, and scope that grows once demolition begins. Front-loaded investigation addresses the first three directly.

It also changes the character of construction observation. When the field team already knows how the wall is built, questions from the site get answered from knowledge rather than from a new investigation with the crew standing by.

When front-loading matters most

Not every project needs the same depth. The case for a heavier front end strengthens when the building is older or has been altered repeatedly, when original documentation is incomplete, when interior finishes or occupancy make disruptive discovery expensive later, when multiple enclosure systems meet at a common transition, or when the work is going out for competitive bid on a fixed schedule.

The case is weaker on a recent, well-documented building with a single assembly type and accessible construction, where the record can be trusted and a few confirming openings are enough. Judgment about which situation you are in is itself part of the due diligence.

Where distress is already active and liability may be in question, the same investigative tools are applied with a different objective — see forensic building enclosure investigation.

What due diligence will not settle

Investigation reduces uncertainty; it does not remove it. Openings sample a building rather than expose all of it, concealed deterioration can extend beyond what a probe shows, and demolition always reveals something. An honest front end reports the confidence behind each finding so the owner can carry a contingency sized to the real remaining risk rather than to a general sense of unease.

Discussing an upcoming project

Inspec investigates, tests, designs and observes construction; we do not perform the repair work, so the scope recommended after investigation is the scope the building needs. Our offices in Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis work on existing buildings of most types and ages. To talk through the right depth of due diligence for a specific building, contact us.

Read the full article (PDF)