There are many steps to a successful church design and building process. Without paying careful attention to each one, you can end up with a church building that doesn’t meet your needs. So, we’ve been covering all the steps on our blog, from start to finish.
Once you have your funding plan in place, it’s time to generate the construction documents that your church building professionals will need to bring your vision to life.
Turning Vision into a Detailed Plan
During the design phase it was important to plan from your church’s vision. In the construction document phase, we keep the vision in mind but expand it to create a very detailed level of how things work. Each of these detailed plans make up the construction documents.
A List of Church Building Construction Plans
Here are the various types of architectural and engineering documents that will need to be developed.
Civil Engineering: These documents address the property beyond your church building. Engineering designs will address storm water drainage, parking lots, grading (so that water drains through the storm drain system rather than pooling on areas of the property), water and sewer lines outside of the building, and driveways that tie your parking areas to the roads that run adjacent to your church property.
Structural Engineering: These construction documents cover the specific designs of every part of your church remodeling or new building project. In addition to the walls, ceilings, and floors, these drawings must coordinate with water and sewer lines inside the building, the HVAC duct runs, the locations and specific dimensions of elevators, stairwells, doors, windows—the list can seem endless at times, but each element matters.
Electrical Engineering: These documents show the type of electric power service, size of the service and distribution of power through your church building. Besides the basics of lighting and the powering of appliances, you also need to consider where you will want to run audio-visual lines, security systems, your computer network, and your Wi-Fi system.
HVAC Engineering: The type and size of HVAC units, and their location needs to be documented. Also, plans for the size of duct runs and their distribution to each area of the building are included. All the HVAC plans must coordinate with the power requirements in the Electrical documents.
Plumbing Engineering: Plans will be needed for the types of fixtures, route and size of sanitary lines and water. A gas line, if applicable, will need to be coordinated with HVAC and other equipment.
Interior Design: This is also the stage when you will begin to discuss the specifics of your church building interior design. Where do you want carpeting versus stained concrete or other flooring types? What color schemes will be used on the walls and ceilings? What type of wood will be used for cabinets, counters, and doors?
Preparing for Your Building Permits
These construction documents are all necessary for the next step in your church building process: gaining permits for the construction process itself. Until you have those permits in hand, you cannot begin work on your new church building. We will discuss the specific types of permits and approvals you will need in our next post in this start-to-finish series.
Speaking of what’s next, we’ve just announced the first three topics for the 2019 free i3 webinar series. You can check them out by visiting our home page and be sure to register and mark your calendar for the ones you want to attend. Then, watch our blog. We’ll preview all the upcoming webinars for 2019 in January.