"An engineer, businessman, journalist, and construction consultant and mediator with some 40 years' experience, Boyd offers gentle advice on how projects can be successfully completed and court fights avoided. His guidance tracks the people, processes, and unknowns in a project completion process; he even includes the concept of time. His solutions sound simple, and they are, but they require more forethought than many owner/planners give to a project. Boyd suggests putting in the time, or delaying the project, until successful planning is completed-not just what it is and where it will be but also how to get it there successfully. Elegant, technical, and brilliant, this book deserves a place in every construction library and probably in the offices of each of the people involved in the construction process."

-LIBRARY JOURNAL, December 1998

"In Build It Twice, Joe Boyd explains what really goes on in design offices, what guarantees you will be making when delivering construction documents to contractors, how the contracts you sign predetermine the success or failure of your building project. Boyd reveals what you need to know about the daily interactions of your architect and your contractors in order to insure that your project will be built on time and on budget. Build It Twice is important, indeed it is essential reading for anyone needing to engage in a construction project, personally or professionally."

-WISCONSIN BOOKWATCH, February 1999

Comments About Build It Twice:

"Improve Your Odds

The incidence of construction claims has increased by an astounding 1,000% in the last 25 years. To help owners improve their odds, Joe Boyd has written Build It Twice… If You Want a Successful Building Project. Boyd’s book will be on bookstores shelves nationwide in February. Build It Twice explores the reasons most building projects experience construction disputes, delays and cost overruns. 'Architects, contractors, attorneys, claims consultants and mediators all arrive with different, and often conflicting, agendas. Agenda that can ruin an owner’s day,' says Boyd, a civil engineer with more than 40 years experience. Boyd shares insights on common disputes and discusses the respective territories of all those involved with building a project.

Boyd’s central theme is that at least 80% of building project problems come from defective construction documents. His solution is for the owner to build the project on paper in detail, equivalent to what will happen during construction, while it’s being designed.

Build It Twice provides a complete strategy for developing the procedures, contracts, tools and systems to accomplish this task. The book includes a complementary tool kit for owners to anticipate and potentially eliminate most problems. Additionally, Boyd shares success stories, horror stories, a detailed construction glossary and specific curriculum to help owners prepare for their projects.

'Most of us are ignorant when it comes to the building process, not understanding what architects, contractors and other strangers are supposed to be doing. It is what we don’t know that makes the difference,' says Boyd. "

WESTERN ROOFING
January/February 1999

"This is truly a valuable resource for anyone involved with construction projects. On an even broader scale, since 'building' could be a metaphor for a journey through any landscape peopled with both friendlies and hostiles, it can be a resource for planning any kind of project, business and even personal. The reader will find not only the substance of Build It Twice valuable, but that its style is engaging, humorous, logical and consistent. I'm looking forward to reading it again and again as I'm presented with the various traps and pitfalls that are almost inevitable in construction."

-Steven Baltzell, V. P., DPIC
(Design Professionals' Insurance Companies)

"Build It Twice exposes and explains the rough realities of the construction process. The reader is reminded that you can cheat an honest man and that good intentions are not a substitute for personal responsibility. But the author fails as a cynic-because he offers the reader a detailed, clear and practical roadmap, guide, and arsenal of tools with which to drill through the stressed-concrete jungle. There is hope. Anyone who is contemplating building anything larger than a bird feeder should read Boyd's book twice."

-James G. Luce, Esq.

"The genius of this book is that, without minimizing the realities of the conditions that can be encountered in the development of a construction project, it provides strategies that can benefit everyone associated with that project. Build It Twice demonstrates how both the novice and the experienced owner of a building project can define and implement a plan that, even in an industry where secret alliances have been in the making for decades, will deliver a win/win situation for everybody."

-Malcolm A Misuraca, attorney

"This is a unique contribution to the literature of project development. I am unaware of any other effort that has taken as comprehensive and realistic a look at the hazards of the industry, and none that has followed up that look with a realistic strategy the owner can employ to avoid most of those hazards."
"It is a book that anyone concerned with delivery of a successful project-owner, architect, contractor, attorney-would do well to read more than once."

-David Baldwin, director of litigation
support systems, Ibis Consulting

"Having begun my legal career representing owners on everything from strip shopping centers to nuclear power plants, I am familiar with the tendency of owners to rely exclusively on their designers until it was too late. Joe has made this fact abundantly clear in his book. "He has also opened windows for the owner into some hidden areas of construction disputes (contrary to Bismarck's advice that there are two things men should know nothing about: the making of laws and of sausage)."
"Owners-and others in the construction industry-should know about the things Joe Boyd describes in Build It Twice."

-Gregory Thomas, construction attorney