The standard process goes like this: the architect designs the envelope, the structural engineer calculates loads, the specification is written, and then the whole package goes to tender. The fabricator bids what’s drawn. If there are problems — a connection that won’t work, a thermal condition that won’t meet code, a panel geometry that can’t be fabricated as specified — they surface as RFIs. As change orders. Sometimes as field failures.

By the time those problems appear, they cost time and money to fix. Often they cost design intent — the envelope system gets value-engineered, the reveal gets widened, the geometry gets simplified. The facade that gets built is not the facade that was designed.

Northern Facades can engage with projects at the schematic design phase — before the system is selected, before the details are drawn, before the specification is written. That timing is not incidental. It is intentional.

At schematic design, there is still room to deliberate on the envelope strategy that performs to the project’s needs. There is still time to design connections that won’t require field modification. There is still an opportunity to identify the thermal condition that the wall section hasn’t accounted for — and resolve it in the drawing, not in the field.

By the time the drawings go to tender, the envelope has been resolved — structurally, thermally, geometrically. The contractor bidding the work is bidding a system that has been thought through. The drawings they receive reflect what can actually be built.

Northern Facades Design Assist covers every decision point in the envelope — from the first system conversation at Schematic Design through the final shop drawing submission before installation.