The Key Issues of Planning

When you are considering a construction project (or many other kinds of projects), you are faced with 5 Key Issues – Needs, Context, Constraints, Budget and Schedule. You will work on these issues in various forms all the way through the project.  

NEEDS Your Needs are usually about space, the lack of it. But you might also have Needs that reflect poor organization of space or features that are missing. Sometimes your Needs are about maintenance or replacement.  

CONTEXT Your Context issue is about location and circumstances. Some examples are: shape and amount of land, ownership, traffic patterns, neighborhood, topography, orientation, expandability, among others.  

CONSTRAINTS Your Constraints are issues about leases, deed covenants, zoning, building codes, life safety, fire codes, insurance, environmental regulations, landlords, parent organizations, easements, etc.  

BUDGET Your Budget issue has two sides that you will have to balance – funds available and the project’s costs. When budgeting you will need to consider the project’s soft costs such as design, engineering, and financing in addition to the hard costs of construction.  

SCHEDULE Your Schedule may be driven by a deadline or simply a desire to rectify circumstances. In either event you will need to know all the tasks and milestones that you must accomplish, how long they will take and the order in which you need to tackle them. You will probably learn that the saying, “Projects always cost twice as much and take three times as long as you think” is mostly true, sadly.