This blog was written from an interview with Brett Rhode, Rhode Partners, and Matt Tumminia, Hoar Construction held in late fall 2024.
Any project that is built for students is extremely schedule driven. Classes and semesters have firm start dates and our clients have a responsibility to have any facility or student housing development complete, open, and ready to welcome students and their families back to campus before those dates. Add to that, a tight site, busy downtown setting, and a city-mandated height requirement, and precise, early planning between owner, architect, and contractor becomes an absolute must.
That’s the scenario our project team and design partner, Rhode Partners, faced when they set out to design and build Icon at Austin for client, MDL Group. We sat down with Rhode Partners’ Founding Partner, Brett Rhode, and Hoar Construction Project Executive, Matt Tumminia, for a discussion on the strategies and the partnership that helped bring our client’s vision to life under extremely challenging conditions.
Let’s talk first about the project site and unique design challenges for Icon at Austin.
Brett Rhode: Icon is a 30-story building we’ve designed for the UT Austin West campus. Our clients came to us with a very small postage stamp-sized site within the busy, populated campus area. The key challenge was to get everything they needed for their development within the site, including onsite parking which is below grade. In addition, our client wanted to provide students with a variety of amenity areas, including a rooftop pool. While working through how to fit the desired amount of units plus all the amenities and parking, we ended up with a 30-story tower design. There’s a height limit for the campus area of 30 stories, so we designed right up to the maximum height allowed.
We were able to fit everything we needed to for our client within that proposed building, but it was very complicated. We spent quite a bit of time working together with the team from Hoar Construction through scenarios to try to find the most efficient building core. Getting that element right was crucial because the core, all the apartment units within, as well as all the access and egress points have to be in the right location and meet code requirements. Plus, all of those features have to tie in and work with the parking garage below the surface.
How were you able to overcome that challenge and work through scenarios to find the right design?
Brett Rhode: We knew it was very important to have a strong collaboration with our general contractor, Hoar, from the very beginning, as early as we could in design. They could guide us and let us know when certain things worked well and when they didn’t in terms of constructability. Their input was crucial so that we didn’t go too far down the road and make mistakes that had to be redesigned or caught later during the design process.
Matt Tumminia: Spending the time upfront in preconstruction is how we build value into the overall project for our client. We know that sometimes it may feel a little daunting that we’re putting a full team, from precon leaders to superintendents, on a job six months before we even put a shovel in the dirt. But by committing that team early, allowing them to bring all their knowledge from the construction end, and putting them in the room together to collaborate with the design partners and the owner — we can help drive the design and the design schedule to budget and work out a lot of problems before they’re even problems.
Icon is a great poster child for this. We were in precon for roughly eight months before we put a shovel in the dirt. We’re 16 months in on this project and we’ve written 67 RFI’s, which is pretty unprecedented for a 30-story tower.
What tools or processes did Hoar use to help lead the design to budget and schedule?
Matt Tumminia: We got together and did a design pull plan. Together with our design partners, we worked out what the allotted amount of time to go from concept to construction documents needed to be. In addition, we had to be sure to allow for the long durations that it takes in Austin to get a building permit, a site development permit, and all the required applications submitted, and inspection scheduled — while still being able to start the job on time and build it within the construction time frame. The design pull plan was crucial for us in figuring out those key design deadlines, because if we missed design by a month or two, it may have been another year before we start this project for our client.
Brett Rhode: Student housing projects are incredibly schedule driven. They’re one of the most schedule driven building types that we’ve ever worked on. They have to start on time, the schedule for construction has to be held, and they absolutely have to open on time. But it is as important to keep the design schedule. That’s where Hoar Construction came in and made a huge difference. For example, they provided quick turnaround on pricing and were able to give our client and us confidence that we could keep moving forward with the project and design. We were able to keep the design within budget and meet our design deadlines because we had really great intelligence on the preconstruction side.
What advice or takeaways do you have for other architects and owners on early contractor partnership during the design phase?
Brett Rhode: Our firm won’t do it any other way on a project of this scale. You have to have very strong preconstruction expertise, with a great group like Hoar Construction that has a track record of doing these kinds of projects. It would not be possible in my mind, or at least it would be very risky, to move forward without that kind of expertise on board. They have really streamlined the process. They know what they’re doing, and they know the right questions to ask at the right time. There are always going to be things that need to be discussed between architect, contractor, and owner along the way and a knowledgeable team like Hoar brings great questions to the discussion that drive better results, earlier in the process.
