Principle 3: Limit Waste

In the role of architects there are many responsibilities and liabilities. Our goals are creating spaces that exceed our clients’ expectations, designing a safe environment, managing and designing to a budget and creating an environment and design that is sustainable throughout time. Creating a safe space and managing to the goal budget both dovetail together: usage of safe materials and limiting waste. Limiting waste takes research and planning.  The two primary ways that Jeffrey Bruce Baker Designs mitigates waste are:

1.      We design buildings and spaces that maximize the usage of standardized materials.  For example, designing to maximize and use the entire lengths of stocked lumber, beam members, joists, plywood sizes… used in the design limits the amount of cutting and waste on the job site.  It also creates a design that can assist in minimizing errors from complex job site alteration.

2.      Many of our home designs are very modern and require creative solutions for building long spans and unusual shapes - this excites and drives us but means lots of planning with engineers, the builder, and routinely working across residential and commercial suppliers to achieve the design intent while also mitigating waste.  It is all about planning and coordination.

Simply put, limiting waste limits landfill growth, and means the client is keeping more of what they purchased on site versus throwing away money. We know our extra planning offsets our fees and saves money in construction costs.