Church Design-Build Specialty Growing
Dec 15, 2005 8:00 AM
As the design-build strategy gains popularity across the country, a growing number of firms are staking out a claim to the worship market by presenting themselves as church design-build specialists.
The National Association of Church Design-Builders, based in Arlington, Texas, brings together about two dozen prominent firms that specialize in applying the design-build delivery strategy to churches. NACDB runs an annual project awards program, as well as a certification program enabling some member company executives to designate themselves “Certified Church Consultants.”
To earn the CCC credential, a member must go through a multi-day training program and pass a written examination, along with writing a thesis describing possible solutions for a church building challenge. Certification is good for two years.
NACDB’s website includes a “Project Pricing Profiler” designed to enable church leaders to get at least a general idea of the costs of new construction before they begin. Among the 20-plus questions asked in the profiler are a number focused specifically on AV concerns:
Site visitors answer the questionnaire and submit it online, then get a response from NACDB’s specialists.
Some individual company websites offer similar services, including a cost calculator online at Horst Construction in Lancaster, Pa.
The NACDB site also includes a large portfolio of recent projects in several cost ranges, as well as guidance on selecting a DB company and comparing DB to more traditional project execution methods.
Greg Barron of G. L. Barron Company, Fort Worth, Texas, serves on NACDB’s board and points out, in a recent article posted on his company’s site, that the separation of construction and design services is a relatively recent development. In earlier times—from prehistory through the late 19th century—the “master building” concept united the roles of designer and contractor in a single individual responsible for an entire project.
NACDB is, as might be expected, a strong advocate for the design-build approach, pointing out that it offers such advantages as a single point of contact for the owner, the opportunity for the owner to influence building design at the earliest stages, and the chance to fast-track projects in ways that the competitive-bid system can’t match. “The single biggest obstacle for an owner to overcome is the perception that he will be paying too much because his project is not competitively bid,” NACDB says. “To overcome this issue, an owner should spend significant time qualifying the design-builders he interviews. A successful design-build relationship requires a high level of trust, and that trust must be justifiable.”
NACDB also includes detailed guides to selecting a DB firm, including lists of the right questions to ask potential consultants and the questions church owners should hear from them during preliminary meetings.
Much depends, of course, on the specifics of each church-contractor relationship. But ideally, as Stephen Shehorn, corporate vice president of T&W Church Solutions in Indianapolis puts it, "The right design-builder can make a major construction project a period of ministry focus, as opposed to ministry distraction.”
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