Design/build class information

[wamegojim]

I am wondering if any of you have seen any classes that go into design and layout of the power distribution system and possibly going into lighting design? I don't want to get really deep into the engineering but we are seeing more projects come our way that have just a footprint and a brief narrative. A lot of government projects are being bid this way and the engineering work is done on the back end.

I have been estimating mostly plan spec prior to this so it is a bit new. If it was a small office or tenant fit-up it would be no big deal but these are several million dollar electrical jobs. Thanks for any advice.

 

[BryanMD]

I am wondering if any of you have seen any classes that go into design and layout of the power distribution system and possibly going into lighting design?... I have been estimating mostly plan spec prior to this so it is a bit new. If it was a small office or tenant fit-up it would be no big deal but these are several million dollar electrical jobs.

For smaller projects with simple, plain vanilla requirements the 'design' is really about explaining to an *owner* (or noobie GC) what is customary and appropriate for their application and the 'engineering' is limited to a load calc and phase balancing for the panel schedule.

Lighting design (retail or high end resi) can usually be done more than adequately by the sales rep for the lighting maker or someone from the distributor (he'll want the fixture order).

The key in the above is having a relationship with the person that writes the checks. Someone you have dealt with (profitably) before and where they know and trust your opinions; and have sought you ought to for this project and won't question/doubt everything you say.

Anything (and especially anything involving a gov job) that involves more than a few hours on your part to achieve a workable plan and scope needs to have someone (owner/GC) willing to pay for the skills a professional will charge to do that work. It can be the EC directly but that is rare.

Doing it on spec is absurd.

 

[shockin]

BryanMD - It may be a regional thing, but around here it's the norm to be given only the square footage and foot print of the building and your expected to give them a "turn-key" number. The electric on these projects range from 150K to 1.5M. Occasionally the owner may require you to provide engineered drawings, however you have to bid the job prior to hiring an engineer therefore you guess how they will design it. Therfore generally the design is done in house. To answer the OP I don't know of any classes on the distribution side, but there are a number of lighting manufactures that have very informative classes held at their facilities. You might try asking your lighting reps about them. Good luck - It appears that Bid - Design - Build is the future.

 

[shockin]

You might try the web site www.DBIA.org if you want to get into more design-build as well. It is the Design Build Institue of America. It's more focused on construct in general then electrical, but their magazine is interesting.

 

[charlie tuna]

"design build" is one of those "top secret" issues like estimating that other contractors refuse to discuss.. it gives them an edge over another electrical contractor for getting a job!! as explained above, i think you start into it and grow. and it takes some trust on the part of your customer to get into it. we did office interiors and actually got into it because the building's engineering firm was too busy to meet the tenant buildout schedule. they had us do the buildout and maintain as built drawings which were later stamped by the engineer. this turned into a profitable thing for the building and tenant because the engineering costs were nil.... and this particular engineer loved it because much of the buildouts were remodels and we incorporated existing circuits into the new buildout... but i knew our limitations -- and only designed installations we were sure of. we also branched out into the printing industry and did some rather large installations... i always was interested in lighting but never found a place to gain alot of knowledge on it. always had to depend on the lighting reps which tied us into their fixtures. the manufacturer trains them--period....

 

[satcom]

The design build word had been making it's rounds for years, leading many to belive that they can by pass the professional engineers and design the job, the first issue is are you qualifed to do design work, in most states that requires a professional license, and seal, don't confuse layout, of job materials, with design. Check with your liability insurance carrier, my bet is your are not covered of any design work.

 

[wamegojim]

"The design build word had been making it's rounds for years, leading many to belive that they can by pass the professional engineers and design the job, the first issue is are you qualifed to do design work, in most states that requires a professional license, and seal, don't confuse layout, of job materials, with design. Check with your liability insurance carrier, my bet is your are not covered of any design work."

There is no intent at all to bypass the engineer. The only issue is the drawings are at about a 10% stage. A narrative might be provided that tells you that there is 190 tons of cooling, Electric heat, a vehicled repair area, some other special occupancies, plus a lot of other requirements. The idea is to get an accurate estimate that is somewhat designed and then bidding it. The design is then done after award. As Shockin points out, instead of design - bid- build the process in this case, as it is for any large government project, has become bid-design-build. I am simply trying to be a better estimator and have a better grasp of the design side and make my estimates do a better job of covering the issues.

 

[john_axelson]

If it was a small office or tenant fit-up it would be no big deal but these are several million dollar electrical jobs. Thanks for any advice.

If you are bidding several million dollar electrical projects without design experience you would be better off teaming up with a local engineer or electrical designer and having them do a layout for you to bid off of. Include their design cost in your estimate. You will need to work with them and let them know that if you get the project, you will be hiring them, but you need a schematic design to bid off of first. Since you are asking for information on service sizing and lighting layout and you mentioned that you bid mostly plan and spec work, you probably need to leave the design to the qualified on this large of a project.

I would suggest you start out on something smaller until you develop a better understanding of design.

 

[satcom]

If you are bidding several million dollar electrical projects without design experience you would be better off teaming up with a local engineer or electrical designer and having them do a layout for you to bid off of. Include their design cost in your estimate. You will need to work with them and let them know that if you get the project, you will be hiring them, but you need a schematic design to bid off of first. Since you are asking for information on service sizing and lighting layout and you mentioned that you bid mostly plan and spec work, you probably need to leave the design to the qualified on this large of a project.

I would suggest you start out on something smaller until you develop a better understanding of design.

Excellant, we have a lot of guys out there that just don't understand the process, and feel they can take on the design work, many states, you can't even get a permit on commercial fit-up and small jobs unless you have sealed plans, we have been doing fit-up and small office jobs for years, and always with sealed plans, the engineer is in the loop as early as pre bid, then you have the know it all guys, that walk into some commercial work without permits or plans, when they don't get gought they assume it is ok, the real problems can come if anything goes wrong on the project.

 

[wamegojim]

If you are bidding several million dollar electrical projects without design experience you would be better off teaming up with a local engineer or electrical designer and having them do a layout for you to bid off of. Include their design cost in your estimate. You will need to work with them and let them know that if you get the project, you will be hiring them, but you need a schematic design to bid off of first. Since you are asking for information on service sizing and lighting layout and you mentioned that you bid mostly plan and spec work, you probably need to leave the design to the qualified on this large of a project.

I would suggest you start out on something smaller until you develop a better understanding of design.

I understand exactly what you are saying and agree with you. In fact, we have a degreed engineer in-house that is fully capable of doing the design. The schedule for these projects does not permit design time on the front end.

However, I think most of you are missing the point of my original post or at least the intent. I am trying to educate myself more on the design process and some of the basic rules of design and layout so that I can create a fairly accurate conceptual estimate.

Instead, I feel like I am getting some condescending answers from people. Some of the replies tend to indicate that we should let the engineers handle it rather than try to understand some of what they do. Many of the drawings they do are over engineered or only partially done. I have no intention of actually doing the engineering but having the knowledge to conceptually estimate the project is important.

I have lots of installation experience(15+ years) and over 8 years of estimating of electrical projects up to 16M. I just don't have the conceptual side down. Once again, if you know of any resources it would be appreciated. I have been told there is a book some people use with a title similar to "Handbook of Electrical design and Calculations" but have not had luck locating it yet.

 

[john_axelson]

Not being condesending

Not being condesending

The hard part about forums are that you can't read the tone in which something is written.

My point was, I wouldn't pick a seven million dollar job to start brushing up on my design techniques. Can you spend some time with the engineer you have on staff? He should be able to walk you through some of the basics, service design and sizing, lighting calculations (whether they be just RCR (room cavity ratio) or a point by point computer generated calc), the company's standard device layout if not included in the scope letter, how to look at ALL of the drawings and see on the architectural elevations or door schedules, items you need to include, how to contact a mechanical contractor, that is doing the same thing as you, and collaborating with them on the mechanical systems to be used, how to layout a Fire Alarm System, etc.

A lot of people use their manufacturer reps to do lighting layouts or Fire Alarm design, but then morally, in my mind, you are obligated to purchase from them. You should never use their design to get other quotes from it.

If your company has done projects of this size a lot, there has to be internal resources that can help educate you. If not, check you local community colleges for night classes offering electrical design and theory. All of my experience came from just doing it for an engineering firm for 10 years before switching to contracting. It took a good share of that 10 years to become proficient at most everything, so maybe you should just focus on one area at a time and learn that and then move on to another area. I don't believe there is a "magic" book. You have to do the design and learn from your errors.

How would you answer the question for someone coming straight out of High School that hasn't done any installation or estimating? How would you instruct them on how to do an estimate on a seven million dollar project? I think you would start them on something smaller first, but when they were ready you would just explain that taking off a big job isn't any more difficult than taking off a small job. Once they understand how to do the small job, you can break that large project into smaller pieces and they will be able to tackle it. Same thing with designing, just that the larger projects probably have a little more "systems" work that needs to be designed.

Good luck

 

[wamegojim]

Tone

Tone

The hard part about forums are that you can't read the tone in which something is written.

My point was, I wouldn't pick a seven million dollar job to start brushing up on my design techniques. Can you spend some time with the engineer you have on staff? He should be able to walk you through some of the basics, service design and sizing, lighting calculations (whether they be just RCR (room cavity ratio) or a point by point computer generated calc), the company's standard device layout if not included in the scope letter, how to look at ALL of the drawings and see on the architectural elevations or door schedules, items you need to include, how to contact a mechanical contractor, that is doing the same thing as you, and collaborating with them on the mechanical systems to be used, how to layout a Fire Alarm System, etc.

A lot of people use their manufacturer reps to do lighting layouts or Fire Alarm design, but then morally, in my mind, you are obligated to purchase from them. You should never use their design to get other quotes from it.

Tone is indeed hard to pick up. We are doing as you suggest. We use the lighting reps. fire alarm goes to those vendors, V/D to those, and so on. The funny thing is some of the people I work with use thes old rules of thumb like 7w /sq ft for heating and cooling, or some other thning like that. Some of that comes from experience some from some other design resource.

I hope to pick it up a little quicker than 10 years and lots of mistakes (mistakes = lost revenue!).

 

[john_axelson]

I hope to pick it up a little quicker than 10 years and lots of mistakes (mistakes = lost revenue!).

True enough, but that is why I was hoping you have someone that can help you through it, you do the design and have them do a review of it, prior to the estimate.

Yes, people do you use different watts per square foot based on each facility. In a Data Center 7w/sq ft would even be close, in a warehouse or parking garage it is over kill. Those are items that you should be able to pick the engineers brian on. How many watts a square foot should I allocated for lighting, power, mechanical, etc on a job, he probably has a good rule of thumb to use for each type of facility.

This watts/sq ft method is a lot like bidding a job by the square footage. I think most members would tell us to do the estimate and then do a check on the cost with the square foot metod. Same thing holds true for service sizing.

The best resources around here, if not available in your office, is to go to a local community college. We have several "Technical" colleges here that do electrical design courses.

 

[rdelauter]

wamegojim,

There is a book titled, "Electrical Design Guide for Commercial Buildings", by William H. Clark used in our office. It was published by McGrawHill and is a useful guide at times. When i flip through it I don't see any higher math so it might be along the lines of what you are looking for.

Rob

 

[ITO]

"design build" is one of those "top secret" issues like estimating that other contractors refuse to discuss.. it gives them an edge over another electrical contractor for getting a job!! ...--period....

Wow, that summed it up quite nicely, and is the best piece of advice in this whole thread.

Start small, do your own layouts, sell the job, have an engineer review your work and go make some money; all the lessons in between are expensive ones but if you got this far you will figure it out.

 

[aaronabb]

If you want to upgrade your knowledge a bit, read IEEE 241 chapter 2. It is a narrative on how to approach load charictorization during estimating.