BUILDING OR REFRESHING YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE 11 When your architect is ready to send the finished set of construction documents to the city for review, ask him to delay sending them out to bid until your equipment consultant/supplier has reviewed the plans one last time. The consultant/supplier should review the mechanical, electric, and plumbing pages for any remaining omissions, discrepancies, or errors in the dental equipment requirements. The consultant/supplier can then meet with the architect and create a list (addendum) of these remaining missing requirements. The addendum becomes part of the official construction documents that will be sent to the contractors to bid. These requirements must be on paper to protect you from “change orders” during the construction phase of your project. This extra effort from your dental equipment consultant/supplier and architect is worth its weight in gold. Designing Cabinetry for Your Office The architect and the contractor are both qualified to design cabinets for your new office, but it may be preferable to have your architect be responsible for cabinetry design and include the drawings in your construction documents. First, when your construction documents go out to the contractors for bid, a separate line item indicates the cost to build your new dental office cabinetry. If these drawings are not included in your construction documents, the cost quoted for building your cabinets may only be a wild guess. Remember, any contractor trying to win your project will have an incentive to quote a cost in the low range if specific design features are not detailed. This situation can leave you vulnerable to change orders. Second, the cabinetry design phase can be quite time consuming, as can the construction itself. If this process doesn’t begin until after tenant improvements are underway, you run the risk of project delays when the cabinets aren’t ready to install at the appropriate time. If your architect has included the cabinetry design in your construction documents, delays will not become an issue. Monitoring the Contractor Bidding Process Monitoring a construction bidding process involves much more than looking for the lowest total bid. If three contractors are bidding on your project, the architect will typically develop a spreadsheet with three vertical columns. At the top will be the name of each construction company. Below those names will be a series of horizontal line items, including, for example, plumbing costs, electrical costs, millwork cabinetry costs, flooring, fire sprinkler system, and painting. The goal is to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison. If a line-item cost is missing from one of the contractor’s bids, the architect will call the contractor to see if this overlooked cost might be included in another line item. If two of the contractor’s costs for a particular line item are similar, and the third is substantially lower, the architect will again call to ensure that this lower cost indeed covers all the requirements pertinent to the line item in the construction documents. Architects act much like the referee in a basketball game, making the players play within the rules. Rely on them to navigate you through this sometimes very tricky process. The architect and the contractor are both qualified to design cabinets for your new office, but it may be preferable to have your architect be responsible for cabinetry design and include the drawings in your construction documents.