Alexander Shalavi on the Architect’s Role in Commercial Development: Design Decisions That Drive Project Outcomes

The architect is among the earliest relationships a developer establishes on a new project — and among the most consequential. Design decisions made during schematic design and design development set parameters that carry through the entire project lifecycle. Floor plate configuration affects tenant flexibility. Structural system selection affects construction cost and schedule. Facade material choices affect long-term maintenance obligations and the building’s competitive positioning in the market. By the time construction drawings are complete and a contractor is selected, the vast majority of a project’s cost is already determined — not by the construction contract, but by the design.

Managing the architect relationship effectively is therefore not a matter of administrative coordination. It is a core development competency. The developer who engages with the design process actively — who understands how design decisions translate into cost, schedule, and tenant demand outcomes — produces better projects than the developer who delegates design decisions to the architect and reviews drawings as a passive recipient.

Architect Selection: Matching Capability to Project Requirements

Architect selection for a commercial development project should be driven by demonstrated capability in the specific building type, market, and regulatory environment of the project — not by general reputation or prior personal relationships. An architect with a strong portfolio in multi-tenant office buildings may not be the right selection for an industrial development or a mixed-use project with retail at grade and residential above. The design challenges, code requirements, and tenant expectation profiles of these building types are sufficiently distinct that experience in one does not reliably translate to the others.

Beyond project type experience, the architect’s familiarity with the local regulatory environment — the specific jurisdiction’s zoning code, building department processes, and design review requirements — affects the efficiency of the entitlement and permitting process. An architect who has completed projects in the same jurisdiction understands how the building department reviews submissions, what common comment issues arise, and how to structure drawings to minimize review cycles. That familiarity has a direct effect on the project’s schedule.

The architect’s internal resource allocation — specifically, which staff members will actually work on the project versus which were presented during the selection interview — is a practical selection consideration that requires explicit discussion before engagement. A firm that presents its senior partners during selection and assigns junior staff to execution is a firm whose actual capability on the project may differ significantly from the capability represented in the proposal.

The Design Development Process: Where Cost Is Determined

The design development process moves a project from conceptual massing and program to a set of coordinated drawings that define the building in sufficient detail for cost estimation and contractor procurement. It is the phase during which the most consequential cost decisions are made — and the phase during which developer engagement in the design process has the highest return.

Structural system selection is among the earliest and most cost-significant design decisions. A steel frame structure carries different cost, schedule, and flexibility implications than a concrete frame or wood frame structure — and the selection must be made with reference to the specific project parameters: span requirements, floor-to-floor heights, fire rating requirements, and the construction market’s current pricing for each system. An architect who defaults to the structural system most familiar from prior projects, without a cost-comparative analysis for the specific project, is making a decision that may carry a premium the project’s economics do not support.

Mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems represent a significant portion of construction cost in commercial buildings, and their design affects both the construction cost and the building’s long-term operating expense profile. A building designed with efficient mechanical systems — appropriate for the climate, the building type, and the expected tenant profile — produces lower operating costs that make the space more competitive in the leasing market and more attractive to tenants evaluating total occupancy cost. MEP system design decisions made during design development, before systems are coordinated with structural and architectural drawings, are more easily and inexpensively adjusted than changes made after coordination is complete.

Value Engineering: Discipline Without Compromise

Value engineering is the process of reviewing a project’s design for opportunities to reduce cost without reducing the functionality, quality, or marketability of the finished building. It is most effective when conducted early — during design development, before construction documents are complete — because design changes become progressively more expensive to implement as drawing completion advances.

Effective value engineering requires the developer, architect, and cost estimator to work from the same cost data — a current, detailed cost estimate that identifies the cost of each building system and compares it to the project’s budget targets. Without that shared data, value engineering discussions are based on impressions rather than facts, and the risk of cutting in the wrong places — reducing quality or functionality in ways that affect tenant demand or building longevity — increases.

Value engineering that reduces tenant improvement allowance requirements by designing more flexible, efficient floor plates is value engineering that supports the project’s leasing economics. Value engineering that reduces facade quality in ways that affect the building’s long-term market positioning is value engineering that improves the construction budget at the cost of the asset’s long-term competitive position. The distinction requires the developer to be actively engaged in the evaluation — understanding not only the cost implication of each change but its effect on the building’s performance in the market.

Managing the Architect Relationship Through Construction

The architect’s role during construction — as the construction administrator, reviewing submittals, responding to requests for information, and observing construction for conformance with the design documents — is as important to project outcomes as the design process itself. A construction administrator who responds to RFIs promptly, reviews submittals with sufficient thoroughness to catch errors before they become field problems, and visits the site with enough regularity to identify conformance issues early contributes directly to the project’s schedule performance and construction quality.

Delayed RFI responses are among the most common sources of contractor schedule claims. When a contractor’s work is dependent on an architectural decision that has not been made, the work stops — and the delay accumulates carrying costs and potentially generates a schedule claim that the architect’s delay contributed to. Establishing RFI response time standards in the architect’s contract, and monitoring compliance with those standards through the construction phase, is a project management practice that protects the schedule.

The architect and contractor have an inherent tension in their interests during construction: the architect’s obligation is to ensure the contractor’s work conforms to the design documents, while the contractor’s interest is to complete the work efficiently and minimize cost. The developer’s role is to manage that tension — ensuring that the contractor is held to the quality standard the design documents require while ensuring that the architect does not use the conformance review process as an opportunity to refine or expand the design at the contractor’s expense. Clarity about the scope of the architect’s construction administration authority, established before construction begins, reduces the frequency and cost of that tension.

Design as a Competitive Leasing Asset

A building’s design affects its performance in the leasing market in ways that translate directly into financial outcomes. Floor plate efficiency — the ratio of rentable area to gross building area — determines how much of the construction cost converts into leasable revenue-generating space. A floor plate that is inefficient by design requires tenants to pay rent on a larger gross area for a given amount of usable space, which makes the building less competitive against alternatives with more efficient layouts.

Column spacing, floor-to-ceiling heights, and the distribution of core elements — stairs, elevators, and mechanical rooms — determine how flexibly the floor plate can be divided to accommodate tenants of different sizes. A building designed with a flexible, divisible floor plate can serve a broader range of tenant size requirements, which expands the potential leasing pool and reduces the risk that the building’s physical configuration becomes an obstacle to reaching stabilized occupancy.

Natural light, building access, and loading and service infrastructure all affect tenant satisfaction over the lease term — and tenant satisfaction affects lease renewal rates at expiration. A building that performs well for tenants over the lease term is a building whose tenants are more likely to renew, which reduces the re-leasing cost and vacancy exposure that accompany tenant turnover. Design contributes to that performance in ways that extend well beyond the initial leasing transaction, and those long-term effects are worth modeling explicitly as part of the development program.

About Alexander Shalavi

Alexander Shalavi is a Partner at Bridge Capital Partners, a commercial real estate investment and development firm operating across high-growth West Coast and Midwest markets. Shalavi leads development strategy for the firm, with expertise spanning ground-up construction, property repositioning, and full-cycle portfolio management. His work covers the complete project lifecycle — from site acquisition and capital structuring through entitlement, construction oversight, and asset stabilization. Bridge Capital Partners focuses on markets where supply constraints and demand fundamentals support durable long-term returns across market cycles.