Creating an FNG Community Garden Farm Co-op facility is an intricate and detailed process. Many various components must come together to build a smoothly operating and long-lasting building and facility. FNG and its project development team, Wiidookaw, follow a detailed and comprehensive process to ensure that from inception the planning of each facility is complete, clear and entirely documented through detailed construction design drawings.
At the inception of a project, we consider all the variables including, client wants & needs, community planning, resource availability, skilled and unskilled labour access, geography, and many other factors in creating a preliminary design that attempts to address these challenges and opportunities. We utilize the initial plan to create an outline of the project, a “napkin sketch” showing the major needs and considerations. We then take this “napkin sketch” back to our project partners for review, comment and revision. At this stage we are trying to ensure that we consider all the high-level needs of the project, including the following:
- Overall Building Size
- Major components of the facility
- What are the inside requirements, the space needs of the facility to satisfy the primary objectives of the project
- Are there issues that may make specific materials or methods of construction inefficient or wasteful of limited resources?
- Time constraints
- Geographical constraints
- Resource or skills restraints
- Beneficial opportunities incorporated into the project
Once the development team has created this “napkin sketch” we start to define our space and what needs to be in our building, including what types of construction will work to meet the requirements of the preliminary plan. At this point, we take back all of the information we have gathered such as comments, revisions, feedback and create a 30% complete set of construction drawings. These drawings contain many of the details, shapes, and sizes of the end facility, but still, lack sufficient information to allow construction to proceed. These drawings are taken back to the project table to be reviewed, commented on and critiqued.
At this stage, we have an excellent idea of the final shape of our facility, but we still need to finalize the last vital items to allow us to create final construction drawings. We incorporate the comments and information from all the previous stages into our drawings and produce a 60% complete set of blueprints. These drawings are fully dimensioned, with general notes and critical details incorporated. All construction methods and materials used in the final facility have been selected and included in these drawings. Once again, we take these drawings back to the project team and vet one last time.
Created now are the final set of 90% documents. Like the previous stage, these drawings contain all the necessary dimensions required to build the facility. They also provide all prior stage materials and methods. This stage is the final time the drawings are taken back to the project team for final vetting. During this stage, we ask all project participants to make last comments and give final approvals to the design. Once all of these stages are complete, the Project Development team takes these drawings and completes a final review of all blueprints. We also conclude a last coordination review of the drawings and ensure that lines, dimensions, and sizes are fully coordinated to ensure that our facility is ready to be built.
FNG and Wiidookaw believe that this process, fully coordinated and comprehensive as it is, is the best way to ensure that the project drawings and documents are sufficient to allow the smooth and efficient construction of each & every facility.
