What role do you have during construction?
What Are the Roles Played By The Project Owner Or Developer During Construction?

The role during construction of a developer or owner in a construction project are perhaps the most assumed of the project participants. Most parties involved in actualizing a construction concept only associate the owner with writing checks. The few that appreciate the owner’s involvement only sum up their role into the easily neglected supervisory duties.
However Here in Dallas TX, DBA Architects argue that while most project managers never put down the developer’s roles in writing as they would those of an architect company, owners contribute to the success of the project in their own unique way. Some of their implied roles in a construction project include:
Coordinate prime and sub-contractor’ activities
Most developers engage the services of different contractors to hasten completion pace and improve the quality of the project. These typically include the architect of record, electrical contractors, interiors designers, and even landscaping professionals. The contract terms for the involved parties are different and so are their roles. Here, the owner’s role is to coordinate all parties to ensure that a sluggish contractor doesn’t slow down the rest. This role also involves providing a healthy coordination of the involved parties.
Project insurance
The developer is also tasked with the responsibility of assuming the insurance coverage of his project and all involved parties. They must take up the responsibility of ensuring that the automobiles, professionals, and workers operating from the site are covered. In the case, of homeowner policies that don’t have a construction cover, the owner must ensure that individual contractors have general liability covers for their workers.
Note that most contractors try to shift this responsibility to the developer in the fine print of their contracts. It is, therefore, the role of the project owner to ensure insurance compliance before giving the green light on the commencement of the construction.
Providing site surveys

Most of the owner or developers roles like the provision of surveys and access to the construction sites are assumed as most consider them obvious. But DBA architects beg to differ and classify as any other role on the basis that its delay may negatively impact the progress of the entire construction project.
Such surveys include property boundaries and construction project lines as well as the geotechnical and environmental reports from relevant authorities. This role particularly comes in handy before the commencement of the project as the developer owes a sense of duty to the project tenants and the public.
Ensuring proper interaction between project and adjacent properties
What happens when the construction project takes place in sloppy terrains that call for ground activities extending into adjacent properties? Similarly, what happens when the adjacent properties limit or restrict access to the site by the contractor or their materials? The owner’s role here includes ensuring proper interaction of his site with adjacent properties in a manner that doesn’t inhibit or delay the progress of the project.
For instance, the developer should seek permission from adjacent property owners to allow the stretch of architect company’s activities into their property. They should also seek consent to access their site through these adjacent properties.
Procurement and installation of fixtures
Ideally, the accumulative role of the architect company and contractors involved in the construction project revolves around raising the structure. This makes it the developer’s responsibility to furnish the finished structure to meet consumer’s needs.
The level of furnishing may involve deciding on the painting colors as well as the installation of furniture. However, some of these fixture elements may be captured within the contracts of different parties thus absolving the developer this role and leaving it to the professionals.
Bottom line
Owners and project developers aren’t just involved in writing checks and facilitating other payments. Their roles within the construction site, though implied, carry a lot of weight. They can delay the progress of the project thus inconveniencing the parties involved or crippling it entirely. It is, therefore, important that parties involved in the construction project consider tearing into the capital and supervisory blanket roles and point at the specific contributions of the project developer and owners into the life of the construction.