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Thought Leadership: Preconstruction & Design Assist
Target Value Delivery: Preconstruction & Design Assist
At Martin Electric, we view Design-Assist not simply as a service, but as a smarter approach to project delivery. By engaging early in the process, we help bridge the gap between design intent and real-world execution—bringing practical field insight, coordination expertise, and cost-conscious thinking to the table.
This collaborative model allows us to work alongside the design team and ownership from the outset, ensuring constructability, efficiency, and alignment with project goals. Our involvement supports better-informed decisions, reduces redesign risk, and creates a clearer path to budget and schedule certainty.
Over the years, we’ve refined our Design-Assist capabilities through consistent engagement with complex projects, delivering results that are both technically sound and strategically aligned. What follows is a closer look at how our process supports the client’s vision from concept through construction.
Why go Design-Assist?
Primary engineering and design remain the responsibility of an outside engineering team with the assistance from our team who bring the field experience to the table. Martin Electric will offer review, suggestions, coordination, management and quality control/compliance. We will provide all CADD & BIM details and elevations for electrical rooms, specialty equipment rough-in, and special systems for approval and distribution to other trades.
Target Value Delivery
The obvious benefits of this approach are a known budget and maintaining a scheduled start. By setting a budget to design around and providing updated cost estimates. The customer and the designer are assured that when drawings are ready for construction there will not be any surprises.
Traditional design-bid-build methods often result in cost overruns, as designers and end users may not fully grasp the budget implications of specific design choices until the bidding phase. Design-Assist eliminates much of this uncertainty by integrating cost awareness into the design process itself. This minimizes the need for redesigns, re-pricing, and schedule delays, allowing the project to progress more efficiently toward its intended start date.
How does Design-Assist benefit the client?
Early involvement in the design process gives our team a comprehensive understanding of the project, enabling us to offer informed value engineering recommendations and apply proven best practices in construction. This collaborative approach accelerates design development, aligns with a defined budget from the outset, and introduces product alternatives that offer better long-term value.
While Design-Assist may shift more responsibility to the subcontractor, it also allows for greater control over specifications and material selections throughout construction. When executed correctly, this results in fewer design revisions, minimized cost overruns, and reduced schedule disruptions—ultimately supporting a smoother, more predictable project delivery.
Our Design-Assist services include:
- Provide early review of the specifications and design narrative with appropriate questions and scope clarification
- Provide analysis of all possible scope gray areas in terms of access, feasibility and risk
- Provide review of schematic design while offering suggestions and/or comments regarding past history of similar projects
- Provide potential cost-savings analysis of design and layout of devices
- Provide early coordination with other trades (mostly mechanical)
- Provide light fixture specification analysis and alternatives with various manufacturers for review by the engineer, architect and owner
- Provide detailed layout and dimensions of electrical rooms and panel locations
- Provide trade coordination and overlay drawings for all critical areas with power and special systems
- Provide coordination with owners and owner consultants for all specialty equipment
- Provide as-built drawings while maintaining updated sets throughout the project
Our Design-Assist Portfolio:
- Regeneron
- Plug Power
- MetLife
- Verizon
- Rensselaer County 1600 Building
- Rensselaer County 99 Troy Road
If you are interested in working with Martin Electric on a Design-Assist project, please contact Olivia Bradt; Business Development Manager at
