Decisions, Decisions, Decisions! An Owner's Framework for Cost/Value Decisions in Sustainability, Energy, Materials, and Other Building Systems

Fred Tepfer, University of Oregon

Laboratory building projects typically involve many thousands of decisions, and sustainable design adds yet another multiplier. Prudent owners involve themselves where and when they can to protect their long-term interests within the context of short-term affordability and, in doing so, find themselves stretched far too thin to comprehensively ensure that their interests are well-represented. Designers hope to develop innovative, cutting-edge solutions, but sometimes have to fall back on the old tried and true. This cost/value dilemma has spawned an alphabet soup of tools and systems: Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA), Value Engineering (VE), Reducing Total Ownership Costs (R-TOC), and so forth. Yet none of us, owners or designers, can afford to apply these tools to more than a small sliver of the decisions that face us during the design process. This session will present strategies for owners and designers to achieve both focus and breadth in cost/value decision-making, especially as related to sustainable design. It will provide a framework of input considerations and expectations of results at key points in the design process. These will be illustrated through real-world building project examples. The presentation will also suggest ways to expand the boundaries of conventional consideration of what constitutes value and what constitutes cost, providing the tools necessary to create buildings that are truly successful in multiple dimensions.  

Biography:

Fred Tepfer has been a facility planner at the University of Oregon since 1984, where he also teaches in the Department of Architecture and College of Education. A licensed architect, he consults on educational facility issues on a variety of project types, including laboratories.

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