Design Guidance

Understand the long-term financial implications of design decisions.

With more than 30 years' experience seeing how seemingly minor design decisions can permanently affect a facility's usability and operating expenses, Lutra has unique expertise to help position your facility for strong financial performance.

The design and construction process involves thousands of decisions. Experienced architectural, engineering, and construction firms provide excellent advice, but they don't actually operate aquatics facilities. Small details in the design can result in unnecessary operating costs, perpetual management headaches, or the elimination of certain revenue sources. Changes during the design stage can generally be accomplished at little or no cost, but fixing these issues after construction is completed often involves substantial renovation expense.

Lutra's design guidance adds an operational perspective to the process, helping you to assess the long-term implications of various decisions on your daily operations. Lutra will evaluate your proposed design from an operational perspective, highlighting areas where small design changes could improve usability, allow for additional revenue streams, or help reduce annual operating costs.

Consider the following examples of design issues that create unanticipated problems:

At one of our facilities, the architect didn't include any reasonable way to reach certain lights that are 40 feet above 12 feet of water. As a result, changing these lamps costs several thousand dollars per bulb.

Often, we encounter pool designs with multiple main entrances to the facility, or with easy access from spectator areas to the pool deck. The resulting difficulty in controlling access to the facility and in differentiating users from spectators can increase staffing expense, limit revenues, and expose the facility to liability claims.

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