For owners + developers
Your most important project decisions are made before construction begins.
earth’smart helps owners and developers define what a building must achieve, bring relevant expertise into the project earlier, and protect long-term performance, resilience, and value from the outset.
01The owner’s challenge
Even when every expected requirement is met, project teams can still overlook opportunities to improve long-term performance, and owners and developers ultimately bear the consequences.
Most project teams are organized to deliver a permitted building within an approved budget and schedule. Those are essential responsibilities, but they do not automatically produce the safest, most resilient, durable, efficient, or valuable building the investment could support.
Architects, engineers, and builders bring important expertise. Yet the conventional delivery sequence often prevents the people with the deepest knowledge of specific products, systems, and assemblies from contributing until many consequential decisions have already been made.
The issue is not necessarily the quality of the team. It is whether the team has access to the right knowledge early enough to use it.
01Better options arrive too late
02Systems are evaluated separately
03Changes become more expensive
04Long-term value is compromised
02The earth’smart approach
Bring the right knowledge forward while it can still improve the project.
earth’smart provides an owner-centered layer of guidance that keeps the desired outcomes visible throughout early planning and design. We identify the decisions carrying the greatest long-term consequences, then help the project team access the expertise needed to evaluate them well.
Manufacturer-Integrated Project Delivery
A more informed delivery approach that engages qualified manufacturer product-category experts before critical product and system decisions are fixed.
- 01Define the owner’s outcomes
Establish what the building should achieve over its full service life.
- 02Identify consequential decisions
Focus attention where performance, risk, cost, and future value are most affected.
- 03Integrate relevant expertise
Engage qualified experts alongside the project team while alternatives remain available.
- 04Make better-informed choices
Evaluate compatibility, installation, performance, and long-term use as a whole.
Resilience + safety
Durability + service life
Energy + mechanical performance
Indoor environmental quality
Cost + value discipline
Maintenance + adaptability
Expertise is added without displacing the team.
earth’smart and participating manufacturer experts work with the owner, architect, engineers, builder, and consultants. Established professional responsibilities and design authority remain intact.
03Ways to engage
Use the level of support the project actually requires.
earth’smart is not limited to one delivery format. We can strengthen a capable existing team, add specific expertise where it is missing, or establish a complete new path when a project requires a substantial reset.
01
Strengthen the existing team
Add owner-side guidance and relevant product or system expertise without changing the project’s established leadership.
Discuss focused support ↗ 02Add specialized partners
Fill specific knowledge or capability gaps with qualified experts who can work alongside the architect, engineers, and builder.
Discuss team enhancement ↗ 03Establish a new delivery path
Reset a stalled or misaligned project through a newly assembled, coordinated, and owner-directed turnkey team.
Discuss turnkey delivery ↗04The approach in practice
Pacific Palisades is showing what earlier, integrated expertise can make possible.
earth’smart is guiding a fire-rebuild residence beyond conventional construction and beyond recently promoted enhanced fire standards, while maintaining disciplined attention to cost.
The project brings more than 20 manufacturer experts into the work early enough to improve whole-building resilience, assemblies, detailing, compatibility, energy and mechanical performance, indoor air quality, finishes, water systems, and long-term maintenance. It is a working demonstration of what can happen when an owner’s priorities, the project team, and manufacturer knowledge are aligned from the beginning.
For a new, active, or challenged project
Earlier involvement creates more opportunity to improve the project.
An introductory discussion can help determine whether earlier expertise, additional team support, or a different delivery approach could create meaningful value.
Build once. Build forward.