Follow Up (after the review)

UCSF, jack of all trades. 
What is the best way for a large institution to run a construction project? Is it controlling everything at the top? Is there a relationship between the amount of control an institution puts on a project to the amount of trust and responsibility given to their hired specialists? Who is ultimately liable for anything that goes wrong afterwards?
UCSF Mount Zion can be seen as an example of developer/institution dominated organization where there seems to be a "no risk" contract. However, responsibility ultimately lies where it traditionally lies, with the designers and consultants that are hired to oversee things. Though, those that are hired are given a weaker position, with less power to do the job and all of the responsibility to get it right

Relationship with the Construction Administration
There is bigger story with the Construction Administration, who were given the shortest end of the stick. UCSF eventually fired ProWest as a trade off in the budget constraint. As bookkeeper or more, the construction administration business should be studied further in this case where risk, control, and decisions put ProWest in a difficult situation.

Architects at Risk
The role of the architect is diminished in this project at UCSF Mount Zion. There is an extreme disconnection and a long chain of command between those who make the building and those who design it. In truth the architect is at the outside edge of the loop, if not completely out of it. Which is why when funding got tight, the project architect was hired to UCSF and the contract with SmithGroup was terminated.

There is more research necessary to back up the information we found in this case. 
However, since the project has been finished for more than a year now, the project has been archived, and has receded from the minds of those involved. Since we didn't have many people telling us their stories, we tried our best to follow the paper trail and interpret the things we found in the many boxes that exist to "document" the procedure. The archival system is always a challenge, though if there were better management of the information we could have found more. We conclude that this is perhaps a typical situation for existing building case studies (as opposed to case studies of buildings in design and construction) and though it is difficult, it is still important to help learn about the professional structure that goes into designing, constructing, and managing a building.

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Fall 2002 Department of Architecture
UC Berkeley