Value-Engineering
Collaboration
M&L specializes in working collaboratively with architects, engineers and other professional clients in order to deliver projects within agreed timetables and budgets. No single person or firm can provide all of the answers all of the time: we understand that our best work is achieved through the cooperation and support of a larger team.
Our teams have delivered projects in some of the most complex environments to be found anywhere on the planet.
From equatorial jungles to uninhabited islands, and from tree-tops to mountain tops, our people have delivered successful projects on five continents. Whether it is a time-critical project for television, or a budget-driven challenge for a non-profit organization, we thrive on tough logistical challenges.
Many people assume that these sorts of projects have unlimited budgets and flexible timelines, but nothing could be further from the truth. We pride ourselves on delivering our work on time and on budget. There’s really no mystery to how we achieve this: just good old-fashioned planning and plenty of hard work.
As we are fond of saying, “Plan the work…then work the plan!”
Listening
What does working collaboratively mean? Firstly, it means listening. Unlike many other timber framing companies that offer ‘one size fits all’ solutions, our priority is to understand our clients’ goals so that we can help them achieve their vision of a successful project.
Sometimes we find that just articulating that vision can be a challenge, and other times it is perfectly well expressed in a set of architectural drawings by the time that we become involved. Either way, we understand that our role is to deliver sound technical solutions (and plenty of hard work!) as part of a team.
Our most successful projects are collaborations where M&L is invited to participate alongside other professionals at the very earliest stages of a design or specification process.
Give us a call and see how we can integrate with your current team.
Simple Solutions
It is during these early design charrettes that our staff can use the experience they have gained from previous projects to bring cost-effective solutions to the design team for consideration.
By consulting with our Project Managers, Team Leaders and Master Carpenters early on, we frequently find that we can offer simple and proven solutions that might otherwise have been missed. This is what ‘value-engineering’ is supposed to look like; respecting the overall vision of a project and informing it with common-sense solutions that will make it more cost-effective to deliver.
Unfortunately this sort of 'value-engineering' is rare these days. The phrase is commonly misinterpreted to mean ‘dumbing-down’ a design in order to make it cheaper! Of course this is not what most clients and designers want for their buildings.
At M&L we can offer simple solutions for complex problems without sacrificing integrity.
