Our Philosophy

Fulcrum Associates performs 90% of its work under Construction Management agreements. Although the circumstance and details vary from project to project, the basic premise is that of a unified team consisting of an owner, design team and construction manager working together to construct a project of the highest quality in the shortest time possible for the Best Value. Typical construction management measures success in three ways – a project that costs what you budgeted, meets your quality expectations, and is delivered when you expected it.

Quality and time are critical, that is why most construction managers focus on them. We believe that lasting project success takes more. In our experience, the leading cause of project failure comes from ignoring critical elements in the Project Management Pyramid shown here. Only when the foundation is built on proven systems for managing Communication, Quality, Procurement and Resource/Risk Management are in place can Scope, Time and Cost be controlled predictably.

Traditional construction management fi rms often overlook these missing pieces. Yet they do so at their peril – and yours. If any one piece of the pyramid is missing, project success is threatened. That is why they do not always deliver results; especially results that last long aft er the project managers go home. At Fulcrum, we have well established policies and procedures in place, supported by the latest technology at our  fingertips to update, monitor, and track all elements of your project, ensuring Project Success. Additionally, our philosophy with respect to Value Engineering and Life-Cycle Cost Analysis sets us apart from traditional construction managers.

Value Engineering (VE) is a systematic evaluation procedure directed at analyzing the function of materials, systems, processes, and building equipment for achieving required functions at the lowest total cost of ownership. Value Engineering is concerned with elimination or modification of anything that adds costs without contributing to the program functional requirements. At Fulcrum we will not propose reductions in a project’s scope or quality to get it into budget, these are not considered VE—those decisions are simply “cost cutting.” We only consider and propose options that maintain Value without compromising scope or quality! Life-Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is a method for assessing the total cost of facility ownership. It takes into account all costs of acquiring, owning, and disposing of a building or building system. LCCA is especially useful when project alternatives that fulfill the same performance requirements, but diff er with respect to initial costs and operating costs, have to be compared in order to select the one that maximizes net savings.

At Fulcrum, we advocate that LCCA be performed early in the design process while there is still an opportunity to refi ne the design to ensure a reduction in life-cycle costs and that only those costs within each category that are relevant to the decision and significant in amount are needed to make valid investment decisions. Costs are relevant when they are different for one alternative compared with another; costs are significant when they are large enough to make a credible difference in the LCC of a project alternative. All costs are entered as base-year amounts in today’s dollars; the LCCA method escalates all amounts to their future year of occurrence and discounts them back to the base date to convert them to present values.