Wondering how to keep your project’s structural cost and material use under control when creating your sustainable home?

Discover why bringing your structural engineer into the design conversation early can save tens of thousands of dollars on your build, as well as materials, energy and time.

Learn the questions to ask your designer, engineer and builder so structural efficiency is built in from the start, not engineered in after the fact.

Listen to the episode now.

Hello! This is Episode 407, and Way #7 of the ‘44 Ways to Create Your Sustainable Home’ series here on the podcast. We’re continuing through Section Two: Sustainable Design Strategies.

In the last episode, we covered the importance of choosing an aligned team. This episode is about something that your aligned team needs to do together: create a structural design that is genuinely efficient.

Way #7 is Creating an Efficient Structural Design, Collaboratively.

This one tends to surprise homeowners, because structural design often feels like something that happens in the background of a project and rarely gets discussed with the client directly. 

But the decisions made around your home’s structural design have direct consequences for cost, material use, durability and longevity.

When we think about structural design and construction with efficiency in mind, it means that every element in the structure is doing its job without excess. 

Structural efficiency approaches the structural design strategically. It considers how it can minimise materials, use products and components that keep costs and components down, and creates site-specific and design-specific solutions so nothing is wasted, over-designed, or included ‘just in case’.

Structural efficiency is not about cutting corners or compromising safety. The safety requirements in structural engineering are non-negotiable, and they should be. Efficiency is about intelligent design within those requirements, not around them.

Many projects are run sequentially. The architect or designer develops the floor plan, the drawings go to the structural engineer, who then makes the architecture work structurally. 

There is nothing wrong with this from a structural safety perspective. But it means that significant opportunities for efficiency, simplicity, and material reduction have often already been closed off by the time the engineer is involved.

When the structural engineer is part of the conversation early, the design itself can be shaped differently. Spans can be kept manageable. Lighter, simpler, more readily available structural members can be prioritised, which assists with efficiency, costs and timing. 

The designer’s assumptions about what might speed up construction, or simplify the design, can be tested and confirmed by the structural engineer as the design is developing, rather than after it’s locked in.

Inside HOME Method, involving a structural engineer early is one of the approaches our members have found most impactful.

Working collaboratively with the structural engineer during the design phase, rather than treating the engineering as something that happens after design is done, has delivered savings of $50,000 to over $70,000 on individual projects.

Alongside the financial savings, there is the sustainability benefit of reduced embodied carbon. Every structural element that doesn’t exist is carbon that wasn’t produced, manufactured, and transported to the site.

In this Episode, I cover:

• What structural efficiency actually means, and why it isn’t the same as cutting corners on safety
• Why structural efficiency usually doesn’t happen by default, and what a sequential, siloed process can quietly cost you
• What collaborative structural design looks like in practice, including involving the engineer during design development
• Where your builder fits in, and how a pre-construction process (PAC or ECI) can bring buildability and cost information into the design conversation
• The questions to ask your designer, structural engineer and builder so structural efficiency is genuinely addressed
• Why your structural engineer is best contracted directly to you, not via your designer or builder
• What this means in a renovation context, where the structural engineer’s early due diligence can avoid major budget blowouts during construction

Plus a whole lot more.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW.

RESOURCES:

Episode 201 ‘The Process to Help Your Home Design be on Budget and Simpler to Build | PAC Process’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-home-design-on-budget-pac-process/ 

Episode 202 ‘The step-by-step way to an on-budget, collaborative project | PAC Process’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-step-by-step-on-budget-pac-process/ 

Episode 362 ‘How to Manage Project Costs Without the PAC Process’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/how-to-manage-project-costs-without-the-pac-process/ 

Episode 276 ‘Teamwork Makes the Dream Work (in Your Reno or New Build)’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-teamwork-makes-the-dream-work-reno-new-build/ 

Season 4 Episode 5 ‘What does a Structural Engineer do? | With Josh Neale of Westera Partners’ >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/podcast-episode-5-what-does-a-structural-engineer-josh-neale/ 

’44 Ways to Create a Sustainable Home’ e-guide >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/ways 

Access the support and guidance you need to be confident and empowered when renovating and building your family home inside my signature online program, HOME METHOD >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/the-home-method/

Learn more about how to interview and select the right builder with the Choose Your  Builder mini-course >>> https://undercoverarchitect.com/courses/choose-your-builder