|
Fully
Integrated Advantage
American is a fully
integrated multifamily and mixed use company. On the development side, we are
pioneers in very high density projects for the Echo Boomer Generation. We not
only have award winning architects, our technical architecture knowledge for
multifamily and mixed use projects is without peer. The Company’s construction
experience involves successfully taking the most complex large mixed use
building projects, and consistently delivering them with the highest quality in
the industry.
Our experience with each
phase of the business allows us to be of greater service to our clients, no
matter which phase of service we are engaged to perform. The most successful
projects are the projects that have the greatest synergy between the players in
each phase. If our designer thinks a particular architectural element will look
better than another, we can quickly determine the effects of this decision on
project costs and then on project rents. With this data in hand, we can equate
how this decision will effect the size of our target market from the demographic
data we are continuously collecting, to give our clients the hard data to be
able to make an informed decision.
Design Synergy
American's ability to provide its clients value is not limited to
its quality construction and low pricing, which have been American's hallmark
for the last 20 years. With American's staff of in-house architects, under the
direction of its CEO, who has been a licensed architect and building multifamily
projects for over 25 years, American has developed a full product line of
innovative multifamily and mixed use products, that can be configured from
garden style slab on grade to multi-story urban podium style projects, to
accommodate singles, couples, families, students and seniors, in project sizes
from 1 to over 100 million dollars. This product line has been individually
tailored for the tax credit, affordable, market rate, and luxury markets.
American’s product line has been designed for the "New Economy," where
efficiency and price will be the primary differentiators. Our product line,
including American’s proprietary Pre-Value Engineered®
Apartments, Echo Boomer Housing®,
and Stretched Wrap Structuressm,
meet these goals with great architecture. The principle behind American's
multifamily and mixed use products is the use of American's inside-out design
process and the use of highly repetitive elements to
regain the cost advantages of site manufacturing lost to the "one-off" design
process utilized during the last decade.
To showcase American's new product line, a full-sized prototype has been built
and fully furnished in American's warehouse, allowing clients to walk through,
touch, and feel the finished product before any design costs are incurred.
With selected Pre-Value Engineered® components from American's product lines,
American's design architects configure buildings to uniquely fit each project
site in a systematic way that creates an appearance of architectural diversity,
with a palate of architectural styles comparable with each site's environment.
This architectural treatment is added without losing the cost efficiencies of
building using highly repetitious pre-value engineered components, the key to
American's exceptional pricing. Our finished products, acceptable to the most
discriminating city planning departments, have been designed to be at home in
any neighborhood. See the Architecture pages of
our website for examples. American’s design services are available independently
or as part of American’s design/build delivery system.
Highest Quality
 Where
American has the opportunity to provide the design, as well as construction, we
are in the position to control the selection of materials and detailing to
ensure they provide the best finish appearance and durability through the years.
Where American has not been engaged to do the design, our approach during
pre-construction is best described, as "design assist." In this role, we work to
help guide the Owners consultant team to use the right materials and equipment
to provide a quality product that meets both visual and functional requirements,
not only initially but through the test of time. Our plan review Architects work
with the pre-construction team to help produce final plans and specifications
that are complete, correct, coordinated, and include details that work.
Frequently, the design assist process includes design/build mechanical,
electrical, plumbing and fire sprinklers.
We then further detail and translate key elements of the plans and
specifications into vehicles that help us ensure full compliance. These include
shop drawings (to further define elements of the projects) and detailed trade
scopes, to further clarify the specifications and to state our quality
standards.
The final step of quality is execution. Our focus on quality execution is
orchestrated by our independent quality control program, which organizationally
reports directly to our President, and has the mission of completing the work in
accordance with our plans, specifications and the further detailing we have
provided. To achieve this goal, we employ proactive procedures to ensure there
is a clear understanding of our expectations prior to commencing production work
for each element of the project. We then follow through on a programmed basis to
ensure that the established standards are maintained.
Lowest Cost
The
opportunity to save money on a construction project diminishes from the first
line drawn on the project's design. By the time the plans and specifications are
complete, the opportunities for the largest savings are gone. And in fact, if
the plans and specifications contain significant mistakes, the opportunity for
cost increases far outweigh the opportunities for cost savings. It is the early
"broad strokes" that have the greatest potential for savings, and by the time
the process gets to the selection of material and equipment, on a percentage
basis the largest opportunities for savings have evaporated. Unfortunately, in
too many instances the "broad strokes" are done at the early entitlement stages
where the project's success is still unknown and the appetite for spending
design dollars to get the most cost effective project is small.
American's product line of Pre-Value Engineered®, cost effective components
allows us the advantage of being able to develop cost-certain "feasibility"
designs. The "broad strokes," the American way, have already been value
engineered into our apartment unit designs, our Echo
Boomer Housing® products, and our Type V Wrap Maxsm
structures, allowing us to design with cost-certain accuracy, ensuring that the
entitled project can meet the budget, and that the entitled design is
cost-effective.
Where
American has not been engaged to do the design, we work with the remaining tools
to control
project cost. The principal component of cost at this stage is subcontractor
work. Creating an environment in which our subcontractors
can perform efficiently and can make the same or greater profit working for us,
at a lower cost than they can for our competitors,
is the key to obtaining the best pricing at this stage. This involves a
four-pronged process: creating an environment which allows our
subcontractors to get in and out
quickly; providing a production environment in which our subcontractors can
achieve a high level of productivity; providing the right type of training at
the right time that allows our subcontractors to build it right the first time,
minimizing the amount of rework; and creating an environment in which our
subcontractors are paid on a timely basis.
In
providing an environment where subcontractors are able to get in and out
quickly, we need plan and
specification problems worked out to
the best of our ability before construction starts. We accomplish this with our
in-house architects and staff involved in the plan review process. Bringing the
problems out of the plans and specifications is key to containing cost and the
cost of lost time. We use state of the art, centralized scheduling and utilize
the latest web-based version of Primavera’s P5 software, which is updated on a
weekly basis. All schedules are then reviewed by our Executive Committee each
Monday morning, with appropriate action taken immediately.
We are
in the site manufacturing industry. To this end, we have adopted a number of
manufacturing practices which have
allowed us to consistently provide the highest quality product at the lowest
cost. These manufacturing processes
include centralized estimating, purchasing, scheduling, quality control, and
cost accounting. We work from the beginning of the
pre-construction effort to try and guide the development of the plans and
specifications to utilize our site manufacturing processes. We
have an extensive subcontractor selection process which is audited on a
quarterly basis by the Zurich Insurance Company, our Subguard insurer. With our
site manufacturing focus, we select only subcontractors who truly understand
this site process in addition to
having the financial strength to meet our other requirements.
To
achieve our goals of producing the highest quality at the lowest cost, it
demands that we get work done right the first time. Rework and extensive pick-up
all cost money and take time, which subsequently gets built into subcontractor
pricing. We work through a disciplined program of proactive training and timely
follow-through to ensure that there is very minimal rework and pick-up.
Getting
our subcontractors paid on time is a total team effort, which involves our
subcontractors, our field personnel, our accounting department, our client
Owners and their lending institutions. This involves getting subcontractor
change orders processed quickly so they can bill for work on a timely basis,
getting the Owner’s pay applications prepared properly and submitted on
schedule, and closing out each of our projects quickly so we can achieve full
payment within 35 days of Certificate of Occupancy.
Repeat Clients
Completing our projects on budget, on time, and ensuring all of our dealings
with our clients include the highest level of professionalism are the keys to
our business philosophy, of designing and building the highest quality
neighborhoods at the lowest cost.
With American's focus on maintaining repeat clients, taking control of design
was an inevitable step. Our biggest frustrations through the years have been
dealing with problems in mostly "one-off" plans and specifications. Solving
these problems during construction has cost American and its clientele money.
Through the years, we have worked proactively to mitigate the problems resulting
from consultant errors and omissions by hiring in-house architects to do plan
review and to help catch as many problems as possible during the plan design
process.
Not only has the "one-off" design process robbed American and its clientele many
of the cost efficiencies of site manufacturing, with its differentiations rather
than consistencies, it had also significantly undermined the quality of plans
and specifications. With each project different from the last, there was little
opportunity for lessons learned in either the design or the construction
processes.
With this realization, American developed the concept of "repetitious
diversity." Recognizing that to reduce the costs of construction, it would be
necessary to recapture the full cost efficiencies of site manufacturing, which
can only be gained by the repetitious use of the same elements. American also
recognized that it had to use this same repetition in the design process, to
significantly reduce the number of errors and omissions in plans and
specifications. With the further recognition that the movement to architectural
diversification was deeply rooted in planning criteria, planning department
opinions, and in public opinion (however, we believe to a lesser degree),
American needed to design a product line of pre-value engineered components that
would also have an appearance of diversity.
American has completed the development of this product line, giving us a
significant additional tool to help manage its clients' profit goals. Whether
engaged to do the design or not, American recognizes that a major component of
our success is completing the work within our client's budget.
Completing projects within budget has six essential components. These components
involve: (1) establishing a detailed budget; (2) consistently revising the
budget as the situation changes, ensuring that all participants and stakeholders
are aware of when the budget is changed and what the alternatives to changing
price are; (3) ensuring that the budgets and buyout are complete; (4) selecting
the right subcontractor; American has a highly disciplined subcontractor
selection process which is monitored by Subguard to help ensure we have no
subcontractor failures (the score is 4 in 20 years); (5) helping reduce the time
and subsequent cost lost to errors and omissions in the plans and specifications
discovered during the construction process. To do this, American employs
in-house architects to review plans and specifications; and (6) completing
projects on time. Our focus of completing projects on time involves carefully
establishing a completion schedule based on our history and with major
subcontractor input on the uniqueness of each project. We update each of our
schedules weekly and review the progress of each updated schedule at the
Executive Management level on a weekly basis. Most important is maintaining a
discipline at all levels throughout the organization that schedule dates must be
met.
We have learned through the years that effective client relations involves five
key tenets: (1) no surprises, proactively leading all of our clients through
each problem; (2) recognizing that perception is reality, and appearances as
well as substance counts; (3) understanding that trust is fragile, it is hard to
earn and easy to lose; (4) managing expectations, writing, selling and
delivering a creditable script; and finally, (5) recognizing that aftertaste is
everything. Our goal when a project is completed is to allow all of the
participants and stakeholders to be able to sit back and appreciate the success
that the Team has accomplished and not to be bogged down with the inevitable
problems that occur as projects progress. This requires dealing in proactive and
timely ways with all issues as they occur, putting them behind us and moving
ahead swiftly. |
