New commercial buildings, from a bare site.

A new building is the one project type where the construction programme is the shorter half of the story. Between a decision to build and a slab pour sits a sequence of consents, referrals, utility applications and procurement commitments, and each of them has a queue.

So the first thing we do on a new build is not price the building. It is map what has to be lodged, ordered or applied for, and when. That map is the programme. Everything else follows it.

Structural system

Steel frame, in-situ concrete or precast, each with a different balance of programme, weather exposure, crane requirement and site footprint. On a constrained urban site the choice is often made by the crane and the truck access, not by the engineer.

Façade

The longest-lead element on most commercial buildings, and the one most often still being resolved when it needs to be ordered. It also carries the thermal performance the building is assessed on and, since the cladding reforms, a materials compliance trail that has to be documented rather than assumed.

Vertical transport

Lifts are ordered against a shaft that has to be built accurately. The lift supplier’s programme is not negotiable in the way a trade programme is.

Services strategy

Whether plant sits on the roof, in a basement or in a plant room changes the structure, the acoustics, the façade and the useable floor area. It is a concept decision that is frequently deferred to detail design, where it becomes expensive.

Weather

Every programme we issue identifies when the building becomes weathertight, because that date governs when every internal trade can start. A programme that does not show it is not a programme.

Energy performance is now a compliance requirement rather than an aspiration, and where a client is pursuing a rating, the evidence has to be collected during construction, not assembled afterwards from whatever records happen to exist.

We treat rating evidence the way we treat any other deliverable: a named person, a due date and a place it is filed. Commissioning records, product data, waste tracking and air-tightness results are collected as the work happens. Retrospective evidence is either unavailable or expensive, and usually both.

• The site, and whether you own itTitle, survey, easements and any existing approval. Conditional purchases change the sequence completely.
• What the building is forUse class drives the code path, the fire strategy and the referrals. It is the single most informative thing you can tell us.
• Who is designing it, if anyone yetA design already in progress and a blank page are different starting points, and neither is a problem.
• The date that actually mattersA lease expiry, a funding milestone, an academic year, a season. Programmes built backwards from a real date behave differently from programmes built forwards from a start.
• The budget, honestlyIncluding whether it is a board-approved figure or an aspiration. We would rather tell you early that the brief and the budget do not meet.