Why Constructibility Isn’t a Perk — It’s the Bar to Entry
Design that doesn’t work in the field costs more than rework — it costs trust. And in a post-2020 world, with construction costs up 39% since 2019¹ and labor availability at historic lows², “design intent” isn’t enough to get a project built.
We’ve been in the room when value engineering takes the red pen to a project. We’ve seen good design pulled apart — not because the vision was wrong, but because the assumptions upstream didn’t reflect construction reality.
At LAI, we don’t produce drawings that look good on paper but stall on-site. We design for the grade, not just the page.
Where Most Projects Fail
The breakdown rarely happens in Revit or SketchUp. It happens when:
- Systems are overengineered for subcontractors who don’t exist in that market
- Grade transitions aren’t mapped to ADA or drainage
- Entitlement assumptions collapse under scrutiny
- Materials are specified beautifully — but they’re 12 months out, custom-only, or incompatible with GC preferences
- Designers never ask who’s building it — or how
Even well-made plans fail when they’re drafted in isolation. Construction is local, phased, and tangible — and that’s how we design.
The LAI Method: Design as Delivery
We treat every project like it’s going to be built under pressure — because it will be.
Our planning and architecture teams collaborate early and often with:
- Civil and MEP consultants from the outset — not at handoff
- Contractors and estimators for real-time cost feedback, not post-design surprises
- City planners and agency staff to flag issues before they stall permits
- Our own internal QA/QC process — shaped by two decades of ground-level construction insight
This doesn’t delay the process. It protects it.
Real Numbers, Real Stakes
- ABC reports the U.S. needs over 500,000 construction workers to meet 2025 demand³
- AECOM says 45% of developers cite design oversights as a key cause of cost overruns
- McKinsey found 9 in 10 megaprojects go over budget or schedule — with half of those failures starting in pre-construction⁴
This isn’t rare. It’s the baseline — unless the design team refuses to pretend that it will all “work itself out in the field.”
Built, Not Just Imagined
We don’t see concept-to-concrete as a slogan. We treat it as an obligation.
We’re not here to win a design award that dies in the VE process. We’re here to deliver places that get built, used, and loved.
If you’re planning your next project — residential, commercial, civic, or mixed-use — we’re ready to prove that constructibility is creativity, fully realized.
