The commercial real estate market (CRE) is always changing, responding to economic forces, to population changes, to vacancy rates and demand, and to trends of how buildings in the different market segments – industrial/warehousing and distribution, retail/restaurant, office, healthcare/medical office, multifamily/apartments – are being utilized.
CRE buildings come to life as the result of collaboration between owners or developers, and a team including architects and engineers.
“Obviously architects and engineers work incredibly close,” said Dwayne Eshenbaugh, principal, NOVUS Architecture + Interiors. “Any successful project is a collaboration between different groups and the two primary groups are architects and engineers.”
Both architects and engineers work to create buildings that withstand natural forces, work with the lay of the land, fit into existing projects, and take sustainability and climate change concerns into account. So what are the primary differences between them?
Design and Function
“Architects are the direct conduit between the developer or the client and the rest of the design team,” said Troy Moser, president, American Institute of Architects, Nevada. They’re often the ones to bring the creative aspects to the project – what the building looks like, how it flows and functions. Engineers bring technical aspects – how interiors stay warm or cool, how the building withstands an earthquake.
“It all works together,” said Moser. “Without one piece you don’t have a whole project and that’s the important role of the architect being the facilitator and the orchestrator: bringing it all together so you don’t end up with say a mechanical system conflicting with a structural system.”
Basically, everything inside the building and the building itself is the purview of the architect. The engineering side is everything outside the building, “There’s some overlap. It depends on who the architect is. Sometimes the architect wants to be involved in all aspects, but that’s the primary distinction,” said Vincent Griffith, president, Reno Engineering Co. Depending on the type of engineer, they also work with infrastructure, water and sewer systems, the site where the building is located.
Within the larger project workflow, architects and engineers work as subconsultants, and either firm might function as the primary consultant, bringing the others in, the way a general contractor brings in subcontractors.
“On practically every project, the architect is at the table sooner than the engineering team,” said Eshenbaugh. With commercial projects, the owner or developer often brings in architects early to help with anything from entitlements to land use strategy, densities, parking availability, utilities and concept design.
Typically engineers are brought in when construction documents are being produced. After that there’s collaboration with the architect leading the project and engineers working building systems. The architect coordinates MEP engineers—those performing mechanical, electrical and plumbing.
Typically the architect contracts with the owner or developer, then hires the subconsultant engineers. “It’s done that way because, more often than not, developers and owners like a single source of responsibility and this allows architects to maintain control over the team in terms of what they do and how they do it,’ said Moser.
“The engineer is responsible for a very specific scope and the architect is responsible for their design of the building, and also responsible for the integration of all those systems, the big picture, making sure that it’s fully developed,” said Eshenbaugh.
Some really complex projects might bring the engineer in earlier, working on the project at concept phase when the project is still being evaluated.
“Typically those projects are developer-driven, not public projects, maybe not even private projects. They’re developer-driven projects that are really looking at the best use of the site, looking for certain budget parameters against their proforma, so we have to bring the engineer in early in the process to help evaluate the cost of building systems.”
There are many variables in the costs of putting a building together. When there’s a fixed budget or specific timeline, bringing engineers in early can help find the best, most cost efficient systems, and source materials that might be hard to find on time, ordering ahead to avoid delays.
“That’s really critical,” said Eshenbaugh. “We’ve seen economic impacts and industry impacts coming out of COVID, because of tariffs, different things like that, there are so many factors that can really delay a project or change pricing—we thought it was X dollars one week and the next week the price doubles because it’s no longer available, or a tariff hits it.”
Making the Design Function
Architects design, engineers make it work. When everyone’s onboard, different factors affect how long the project will take.
Supply chain issues have mostly resolved five years after COVID, but there are still hitches, and interest rates and tariff issues not only haven’t resolved, but seem to be the new normal.
“It’s an unpredictable business and profession, and we’re all in the same boat, we’re all navigating it,” said Eshenbaugh. “What I see is there has to be more collaboration and it has to start sooner because the complexities of not just the project, but all the elements surrounding that. It’s critical if you want to keep a project within budget and on a timeline, to have that entire team in place and working together from the very beginning.”
Project location can impact how long a project takes. Timelines can vary radically depending on where they are in the region. It might take five years to get approval to build a new garage at your house in Sacramento, said Griffith. It might take three years in Reno, one year in Fernley, and a month in Lyon County. “Same improvement, same building code, same review process,” he explained. “It’s more a matter of where you’re permitting than it is about size. Size is a factor, but if you take the same size project, the variance is ridiculous depending on where you permit or try to permit the project.”
It isn’t necessarily because of the size of the municipality, either. Storey County is home to one of the fastest growing industrial parks in the country, but they’re definitely not the biggest municipality. They’re not bigger than Reno, or Sacramento. But they’re faster. “From the developer’s perspective faster is always better,” said Griffith. “So if you’re Microsoft or Google and you want to build a facility, you’re going to end up in Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC), because you want to build within a reasonable amount of time.”
Of course, money talks. Smaller projects generally can move faster than larger projects, but put money behind a big project and it can move. Projects slated for the Strip move faster than locally owned restaurants somewhere in the city.
“Look at the new A’s stadium and see how fast things can move when there’s a large financial campaign behind them,” said Eshenbaugh. And then money or not, some projects take longer—hospitals and healthcare facilities take longer because they’re more complex, with more systems, more permitting, and more reviews.
Abacus and Slide Rule
Technology is changing the fields of both architecture and engineering. It always has.
“We have so much information available at our fingertips, it makes it easier to do research on materials that help us pursue sustainable philosophies and helps us source materials, make projects better coordinated which results in faster and easier to build for contractors with current drafting,” said Moser.
In fact, it’s not even called drafting anymore. It’s called modeling, and it’s in 3D. “We build all our buildings in 3-dimension on the computer with all of the components in collaborative environment so that our engineers and our designers are all seeing the building come alive as they update their models and sync things with one another in a cloud-based posting environment.”
The process allows everyone involved to see clashes and conflicts in a virtual reality before a contractor spends time and resources on building the real thing only to discover it doesn’t work.
Flood management is more precise with technology to do the equations and factor in if climate change means November rain in Reno now would have been snow 10 years ago and what that means for flooding. Technology can find solutions for Southern Nevada properties that have to cool buildings by day and heat them at night.
Over the last 30 years, architectural firms have moved from drawing on paper to AutoCAD in 2D and then 3D to BIM—Building Information Modeling. “BIM, we’re all using now, is 100 percent 3-dimensional,” said Eshenbaugh. “We’re building models of our buildings in real time and everything is very precise.”
It’s probably going to become more precise. AI is expected to integrate with existing capabilities so as BIM models are built they’ll be populated with costs analysis in real time. “As we’re building these models with real components, real walls and ceilings and structures, the computer is going to be smart enough to start putting budgets together, going to be smart enough to start putting takeoffs together where we could output that and hand it to a general contractor and they’re going to know how many 2x4s to order, they’re going to know the cost of construction materials based on that,” said Eshenbaugh.
“The whole evolution of artificial intelligence is something that we can use to our advantage, but we also have to be careful that we don’t rely on it to the point that we allow the human aspect of what we do to disappear,” said Moser. “AI is only smart enough to do what it has learned from things that it can go and find on the internet. It might go and find things that are bad examples to draw from and end up incorporating them into something. That’s where the architect comes back into play. Say there’s an AI-generated concept or picture of what a building could look like. Now I have to figure out how to actually do it.”
Climate Change
AI is expected to eventually help evaluate BIM projects, providing solutions for climate change, which has become an expected, integral part of the planning and design process.
“AI is going to help us with sustainability,” said Eshenbaugh. “It’s going to help us calculate building envelope R-values (a measure of thermal resistance) and design buildings with a smaller carbon footprint.” It will take away the step of researching materials because the information will be readily available. “How much recycled content is in the steel we’re using or in these wall panels or concrete mix or whatever it is. AI is going to provide that information right at our fingertips within our model, we’re going to be able to click and make quick decisions.” It may even warn when projects are going over budget or under desired sustainability.
Ask a client if they want a green building, some care, others don’t. “It’s our responsibility to just integrate it, it’s not even an option, it can’t be at this point—we’re beyond that. We’ve got to work to design the most energy efficient buildings that we can,” said Eshenbaugh.
There are energy code compliance rules as a minimum standard to achieve when designing buildings. Code councils and professional organizations have been raising the bar to go beyond minimum standards with sustainability in mind. Plans need to include interior air quality and how much fresh air is coming into the building, as well as how that air is heated or cooled. “We have to look at insulation and glazing systems that keep the conditioned air in and the outdoor air out, hot days and cold days alike,” said Moser.
“AIA has on a national level been really pushing for our professional members to reduce the carbon footprint on our projects,” said Moser. “That’s become a very complicated and technical thing that we have to pursue as we design buildings, but these things over a long period of time are already starting to pay off. I saw on the news that scientists are saying that the ozone hole is shrinking so I think we’re making a difference in terms of how we manage energy and construction in our world today.” (During the last week of November, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranked the ozone hole as the fifth smallest in 30 years.)
Design and Function in Real Life
Just what are architects and engineers working on in Nevada? Regionally, northern Nevada is seeing massive industrial development and datacenter development. Construction is increasing around TRIC with projects that are keeping silent.
“When people build warehouses or apartment buildings or hotels everybody wants their name known,” said Griffith. “We’re in the middle of the next boom, and big corporations don’t want to share their names. You’re not seeing in the paper that XYZ Company is building a million-square-foot datacenter.” Which is why a field trip through TRIC might be a surprise to everyone but the architects and engineers building there.
Southern Nevada is seeing tourism-related CRE projects, like the new A’s stadium. There are public projects and some continued growth in multifamily projects. There’s not much building on the office side, Eshenbaugh said, and industrial is fairly saturated. “There’s always the discussion in terms of we’re reaching our limits in terms of building out, urban sprawl going out into BLM land, and maybe it’s time to take a look inward, come back in and develop or re-develop urban infill. We’ve learned some things from the pandemic. I’ve seen movie theaters becoming adaptive reuse projects, being utilized for different purposes. Office-type projects being used as something else now. It’s important. That actually leans toward a sustainable development because the infrastructure is already there, it’s not something out on the edge of town we have to extend more infrastructure and resources to.”
