Constructability review, design coordination and other confusing terms defined

Constructibility review, design coordination, interdisciplinary coordination...there are many terms...likely you have come across a few...but what do they mean?

When we started doing a bit of research to try to help our potential clients understand what we do (construction document coordination reviews), we found many similiar terms on the web, each with several common usages.

We would love to save you the hassle of trying to decipher these terms on your own. So, on our corporate website we have posted the definitions, alternate terms, references and relate whether we perform those types of reviews or not. Currently, when it comes to these terms, we are the most comprehensive resource you will find on the web.

Please, if you have ever been confused by these terms, check out these pages.

Construction Document Coordination Review

Constructibility Review

Design Coordination Review

Interdisciplinary Coordination Review

RediCheck Review

Construction Document Review

Construction Document Cross Check

What does the Nigro Firm do?

For some companies this question is easy to answer, "we sell luxury cars," "we manufacture and distribute plastic products" or "we are event planners." But our elevator speech is not so simple. Technically, we "are third-party reviewers who perform construction drawing coordination reviews," whew... that is a mouthful and not exactly self-explanatory!

To simplify, we proofread construction drawings and specs, focusing on looking for coordination errors, omissions, and discrepancies. This is a tough service to market because, A) Most people don't know what to call our service, or B) They don't even know such a service exists.

In the construction industry, you may hear our type of review service called a variety of terms such as:

• Interdisciplinary Coordination Reviews
• Constructability Reviews
• Construction Document Reviews
• Construction Plan Reviews
• Buildability Reviews
• Design Coordination Reviews
• Redicheck Reviews
• Third-Party Construction Document Reviews

You can easily see how people may get confused about what we do and how marketing our service can be difficult. So we market in a variety of ways, covering a broad spectrum from construction humor to this blog to direct mailers to partnership invitations to a Google campaign, on top of our corporate site. These are the marketing avenues that we use to educate our potential clients and parters about our product and corporate philosophies.

What kind of projects does the Nigro Firm review?
Generally, we review high-profile commercial and government projects, some projects so high profile that we can't even tell you about them. A typical project might be something like a new high school, a hospital expansion project or a new museum. To read more about our projects see, Building Types Reviewed and our Abbreviated Project List.

Who is the Nigro Firm?
The Nigro Firm is headed by Natalie Nigro, who has over 17 years of review experience and was trained by her father William T. Nigro, the originator of the RediCheck system, who currently owns The RediCheck Firm, LLC. The Nigro Firm's reviewers consist of highly trained subcontractors with years of construction related experience. Everyone involved with the Nigro Firm, with the exception of Natalie and Shirley Nigro, are self-employed subs who partner with the Nigro Firm, this includes everyone from the cartoonist to the reviewers to the content writer. This arrangement has worked very well for us and we often write about it in this blog. For example, see Employee Relations: Working with the entire human, emotions and all.

Want to learn more? Please see:
Nigro Firm Services
Examples of Possible Custom Reviews
Frequently Asked Questions
About the Nigro Firm

Thanks for reading. Please check out our sites and share our construction cartoons with your friends.



Author: Pamela S. Stevens

Dangers of Using a Checklist for Coordination Review

Warning: Construction checklists may be hazardous to your project health.

Got a checklist? Well, checking it twice is not going to help you. Though a construction document checklist may help guide you through the review process of a construction project, it is too general to account for every possible error. All projects require a unique review process and savvy reviewers that can think beyond the checklist.

“Checklists” are often tied to construction document coordination review services - many will even tout the merits of their quality review “checklist.” Of course checklists can be a useful tool to aid in the process of finding coordination errors, discrepancies, and omissions. However, no checklist includes everything.

There is some danger in relying too heavily on a checklist. They give a false sense of security… a false sense of “completeness” to the review since a single checklist cannot cover all situations. The types of projects (hospitals vs. parking garages), variety of building sites (in the mountains, on swamp land, over methane fields, etc.) and the A/E team’s method of representing information vary too much for a predefined checklist to include everything that should be checked for every project.

A fix to this could be to try to imagine every possible situation and put it in a checklist… however, this would make the checklist extremely long, with most of it not applying to the particular project at hand. Trying to use a checklist that mostly doesn’t apply would be time consuming and frustrating, and it would be easy to skip over some of the items that do apply!

Another danger with checklists is the implied notion that if the checklist is followed, the review will be done the same way every time, regardless of the reviewer or project. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The execution of the tasks on the checklist can be done very differently depending on each individual doing the review. And a particular reviewer may perform that task in a large variety of ways based on the specific project in front of him. Each reviewer has their unique work style and abilities; and the drawings also have their own distinctive set of instructions and organizational style. Sound complicated? Well yes, it is.

An additional danger of relying too heavily on checklists is that it has a tendency to trap reviewers into not thinking “outside the box.” They may fall into the pattern of feeling that the review is complete once the checklist is done, instead of looking into the unique aspects of the project that should be cross checked. Unless you are building cookie cutter projects, every project is unique and needs its own distinctive review process.

The best way to avoid the dangers inherent in using checklists is for the coordination review team to only use checklists as a guide or “memory tickler.” Checklists can be of tremendous assistance, but they are not the “end-all-be-all” of an excellent review. Or you could avoid the hassle all together and contract the Nigro Firm’s brilliant review team to perform the review for you.

If you are interested in learning about the construction coordination review services that the Nigro Firm can offer, see Nigro Firm Services.

Want to know how we find our talented reviewers? See Team Development: Finding great reviewers.

Good Partners are Hard to Find

Mutual respect, open communication and accountability in the construction industry, why not?

Let’s get together. By partnering with the Nigro Firm you can have access to an experienced third-party construction document coordination review team who can catch many costly errors before you go to bid or break ground.

What would it be like to work with a clean set of construction documents? We’ve heard that it is a refreshing and pleasant experience. Give us a call, we can tell you how you can get the most accurate drawings possible.

Good Partners are Hard to Find

We are looking for new partners and we think you just might be a match. We are interested in creating reciprocally beneficial partnerships and would like to extend a hello to you and invite you to join with us. We would be delighted to be able to help you attain a superior set of construction drawings so you can create tighter bids, reduce change orders, have an arsenal for litigation, and make your clients happy. Not to mention, you might actually be able to build the building the designers had in mind without running yourself ragged from filling out RFI forms and chasing down the architect.

For the first time in 17 years the
Nigro Firm is offering a partnership invitation to contractors, design build teams and construction and preconstruction companies.

So how does a partnership with the Nigro Firm work?

Well, it begins with a conversation. We can provide many types of reviews, based on what you need as well as your budget, quality concerns and time restraints. We understand that every project is different, so why shouldn’t every review be different too? So, like all good relationships, we begin with a good conversation. And if you like what you hear and we like what we hear, we are sure to have a good working relationship ahead of us.

What is like to have the Nigro Firm on your team?

We understand the importance of trust and accountability when it comes to being a good partner. So we will always:

• Complete our work on time Ask for clarification if we need it
• Never take on more work than we can finish on time
• Provide consistent and dependable work
• Try to act in the best interest of everyone involved
• Produce accurate reviews

Give us a call and let the conversation begin or email us at bdev@nigrofirm.com.

The Nigro Firm performs construction document coordination reviews, which are sometimes referred to as constructability reviews, interdisciplinary coordination reviews or cross check reviews. For more information see Our Services.

Wondering what kind of projects we review, see our Abbreviated Project List.