Building blocks: Ivar Krasinski

Ivar Krasinski is design principal at Burt, Hill in Dubai.

Burt, Hill principle Ivar Krasinski speaks to MEP Middle East about integrating the building blocks of the build process, from design to final commissioning. As an architect, he gives a unique perspective on the design challenges faced by MEP professionals.

Krasinski argues that, from an integrated design scenario, “the MEP guys should be involved in that process very early. We should have the energy modelling done from the very earliest phase, even before the building shape or intention has been decided upon. All of these things require the involvement of MEP engineers, because they are the ones who can run the energy models for us and help us interpret the data.

“As designers, we can do some of that, but an MEP engineer will have the extra expertise to really make the most of that process. So it is very important to bring in MEP at the very beginning, absolutely. And especially now, if you think about the potential energy savings on building orientation being in the order of 30%, those kinds of energy models should happen long before the client even sees what the building might look like.”

Krasinski explains that, in the past, energy modelling was performed long after the client had already seen the concept, when it had been designed and was already in a developmental stage, “where the cost of making changes was already far too high to make any significant impact.” At this stage if it emerges that the design is not LEED compliant, the only way to deal with the problem “is to add pieces to the building – either hardware, or strange devices to the skin.

Adds to the cost

“All this adds extra cost, and that is where the perception comes from that green design is going to be expensive, because the right decisions were not made from the start. This you end up making a whole bunch of remedial decisions halfway through the design, and that is really what we need to change. Once people embrace the idea of an integrated design process, you are going to find that will not cost more, as per the conventional wisdom. But it is going to take some time for the various disciplines to really recognise this, and that is going to take some work.

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“But we are happy to knock a few heads together to make that come true. The idea is that we start very early with the energy modelling, and work with the MEP guys right from the start. In this way we give the client much better value, and end up with a much more rigorous design process as well,” says Krasinski. Hence Burt, Hill has energy modellers and mechanical engineers “really working together with us right from the start.”

As to whether or not this is happening across the board in the industry, Krasinski is philosophical: “You could always use more of that. And what needs to happen within the design firms is that we must spend more time during the conceptual phase to allow for that interaction to happen. That means that when we are writing out proposals, we have to distribute the fees slightly differently to allow all professionals to come together at an early phase before the architect decides what this building has to be.

“And that means the business model has to change in some ways, because by changing the fee distribution, the proposals and contracts change, the way the schedules are organised change, and the cash flow changes, and these are all things that need to be considered. On the other hand, from the client point of view, they should embrace it, because by spending that bit extra at the concept phase, they will realise significant savings later on – and there is no arguing about this point,” says Krasinski.

Impact on design

Commenting on the impact of the current economic climate on the design sector, he says: “At the end of the day, in terms of the cost of any project, the least expensive part is the design. While we recognise that everyone is going to have to deal with lower margins in terms of design fees, it is most beneficial to the client to spend that time on the design upfront, so they can leverage all those greater costs that occur during construction and the actual operation of the project. If you compare design to the rest of it, that is really where you can save money. So a little bit more spent upfront, regardless of the financial situation, is always going to be a better deal than doing it later.”

Krasinski says there is a well-known curve in terms of skyrocketing costs related to design changes. “In the concept phase, the cost of any changes is pretty much zero, so your curve is horizontal. Then when you get into the schematic, it starts to become steeper. By the time you get into design, development and actual construction documents, it becomes really tall, so that by the time you are doing changes during the construction phase – which clients in the UAE were pretty much fond of doing – those costs became astronomical.”