CATALYST For Owners

Building CATALYST helps reverse the decades of declining productivity due to fragmentation and lack of knowledge. Todays buildings cost too much, and take too long to produce. Starting with owners, the benefits of CATALYST's automation and system of knowledge include:

  1. Certainty of Outcomes - With good data, CATALYST reliably models the program, scope, schedule and cost outcomes before investing in costly and time consuming conventional processes.
  2. Real-time Analysis - CATALYST enables rapid modeling and comparison of multiple building solutions to inform the biggest decisions. CATALYST more reliably performs in minutes and hours what would take days and weeks to perform conventionally. 
  3. Impartial Budgeting - Risk, uncertainty, and bias by cost consultants and builders have been driving budgets to extraordinary excess.  CATALYST and good data can provide more accurate and impartial valuation of scope and cost - giving owners the control over their budgets. 
  4. Rewire Compensation - For decades, architect's and builder's profit has been based on cost and billable hours - which has naturally (and experiencially) driven up both. CATALYST's impartial valuation enables owners to take control of the contracting and compensation tenets to reverse the motivation from rewarding waste to rewarding waste removal.

Recent data indicates a significant post-COVID spike in builder estimates and costs, even beyond the decades of excessive escalation. Since most of the problem is in overhead and supporting services - that's where CATALYST focuses its attention in solving.

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How it works?

As an owner, you can work with the CATALYST services team direct, or together with your consultants. Either way, CATALYST can lead the process. The key is good data - both from the marketplace and your own experience. You can take these advancements as little or far as you like. CATALYST will perform or assist in the following implementation steps:

Data Recording and Analysis

  1. Record a sample selection of your completed or in-progress projects to:
    1. Compare to your experience to the market averages.
    2. To diagnose current project problem areas and develop / implement coarse corrections.
  2. Establish benchmarks that enable you to model proposed project outcomes from both market averages and your own experiences.

Early Planning and Budgeting

  1. Perform feasibility studies for a prospective project or master plan.
  2. Model and compare a variety site, building, and/or renovation options.
  3. Produce a broad-based space program including departmental gross areas, supporting spaces, and core/common spaces - along with massing and costs.
  4. Produce a more reliable budget basis from which to make decisions.

Space Programming

  1. Validate and/or analyze the proposed space program by running comparisons against the market baseline or from your other project benchmarks.
  2. Update the scope, schedule, and cost predictions based on the proposed program. Again, you will have a more reliable budget basis from which to make decisions.
  3. Provide prospective architects with a well-defined project scope and budget to help reduce the uncertainty and risk in proposing on design services.

Design

  1. Validate and/or analyze the proposed design test fits.
  2. Rapidly prototype and compare multiple design solutions in data model form, before investing in expensive drawings and renderings.
  3. Perform due diligence – focusing on the high variation budget areas (site, subsurface, environmental, regulations, etc.) to reduce uncertainty.
  4. Track development and help steer design toward budget or target values.
  5. Provide prospective CM or builder with a well-defined project scope, design, and budget from which to propose services.

Delivery

  1. Conventional Delivery Support:
    1. Provide impartial analysis and comparison to the CM or builder’s estimates.
    2. Focus on major variations for further research and study to revolve variations and reduce cost.
    3. Continue to track schedule and cost to insure project is proceeding according to plan.
  2. Rewired Delivery:
    1. Establish the budget based on impartial data analysis rather than cost consultant or builder estimates.
    2. Select architect based, in part, on response to impartial valuation of program, scope, and budget.
    3. Select builder based on rewired compensation structures. Alternatively, in short term, consider lump sum bidding from completed documents.

If interested in discussing or scheduling a live demo, feel free to contact us at: Info@buildingcatalyst.com