Game Plan

As we are moving into the construction phase of TREE, the third neighborhood at EcoVillage at Ithaca, we want to compare other options to our chosen option of using a single construction management company responsible for all aspects of construction.  Our TREE game plan has been to a) create a community around which community development could take place  b) hire an architect (Coterre) who understands EcoVillage/cohousing development who would create working drawings along with specialty firms, engineering, energy, etc., from which we can construct TREE.  c) hire a contract management company (Lecesse) to estimate construction cost in context of affordable, non-customized, multiple repetative building construction.

We now have a set of drawings and a set of starting construction estimates from Lecesse.  In talking with Lecesse we both are asking if we move forward is this a win-win that both of us want to sign up to do?

Lecesse is an optimal builder when options are minimal, units replicate over and over, models are minimum. Scale is larger to enable affordability by spreading site and other common costs underpinning the project.

The question posed by Lecesse: Is TREE more aligned with a track house building approach as practiced by Ryan?

Other key questions:  Could the project be segmented into three parts:  Site preparation;  houses; SLC with different leads for each? 

This has led us to collect information about construction companies to address these questions.  One scenario is that Lecesse does site prep and the commercial SLC building and the houses are done by local/regional greeen builders. 

The following matrix is a draft illustrating possible scenarios:

	SITE	SLC	Houses	General Manager
Senario 1 *	A	A	A	A
Senario 2	D	C	B	A
Senario 3	A	A	B	A
Senario 4	A	C	B	A
Senario 5	D	C	B	Independent Project Manager
A:  One Construction Management Company responsible for project (e.g., Lecesse) B1:  One builder to build and manage building of all homes (e.g., Ryan) B2:  Multiple builders to address capacity limitations of local building companies B3:  Modular builder(s) to build and manage building all homes C:  One builder to build SLC D:  Excavation/Site Prep Contractor *  Preferred approach if requirements for sustainable, affordable can be met