What we build · Podium
Podium — Wood Over Concrete
Concrete parking and ground-floor uses below, wood-framed residential above. The workhorse of urban multifamily, and the typology where Florida ground conditions bite hardest.
Bring the site, the unit count and the drawings at whatever stage. You get a range, the drivers, and an honest read on the pro forma.
Self-perform
Dewatering, SOE and deep foundations in house
Licensed
General contractor, licensed in the state of Florida
GMP
Open book, with the contingency visible to you
Draws
Documentation your lender can actually process
The podium is the schedule
Everything above the transfer slab is fast and repetitive. Everything below it is slow, wet and full of unknowns — excavation, dewatering, foundations, the transfer level itself. On a Florida podium job the ground floor consumes a disproportionate share of the program, and it is the part most often compressed on paper.
The transfer level is also where two design teams meet. The podium is a concrete structure and everything above it is frequently wood, which means two structural approaches, two sets of tolerances and two trades converging on a single slab that both depend on. Coordination there is worth more effort than it usually gets.
What actually drives it
- Water table and dewatering, which we self-perform.
- Support of excavation where neighbors are close.
- The transfer slab, which is expensive and unforgiving.
- Type of construction and height limits, which cap the wood above.
- Ground-floor uses, which complicate the structure and the MEP.
What the geotechnical report has to answer
Bearing capacity across the footprint, depth to competent material, water table depth and whether it is tidally influenced, the presence of compressible layers, and a recommendation for the foundation approach the loads actually require.
A report that reaches competent material without characterizing it, or that samples a few convenient locations on a large footprint, cannot answer the question the podium level depends on — and that is the level where the money is.
How we handle it
- 01Read the geotechnical report before pricing anything below grade.
- 02Design dewatering to the tidal high where the site is influenced.
- 03Self-perform SOE and dewatering rather than subcontracting the risk.
- 04Coordinate transfer level with the structural engineer early.
- 05Sequence so the wood framing starts as soon as the podium allows.
Get the below-grade work right and the rest of a podium job is comparatively predictable. That is why we spend preconstruction effort on the geotechnical report rather than on the unit finishes, which are the part everyone wants to discuss.
Said plainly
Where we stop
We will not price the below-grade scope without borings. On a podium in coastal Florida that is not caution, it is the single largest source of change orders in the typology.
FAQ
Common questions
- How high can the wood go?
- Set by construction type and code, and it is the main constraint on podium density.
- What is the biggest schedule risk?
- Everything below the transfer slab. Dewatering and excavation, especially near the water.
- Do you self-perform the dewatering?
- Yes, along with support of excavation. It is why our podium programs tend to hold.
- Can you price without a geotechnical report?
- Not below grade. It would be a guess that becomes a change order.
The terms
GMP & Contract Structure
A guaranteed maximum price is the standard structure for multifamily, and how it is assembled matters more than the number on the front.
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Lender Draws
Your lender is a stakeholder in the program whether or not anyone treats them as one. A draw that gets rejected costs you a month of carry.
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Contingency
Contingency is not padding and it is not free money. It is a bounded provision for things nobody could reasonably have known, and it should be governed as such.
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Schedule Risk
On a multifamily deal a month of delay costs carry plus a month of deferred lease-up, and that combination is usually larger than any construction saving anyone negotiated.
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Material Escalation
Between pricing and buying, materials move. Somebody carries that, and the contract should say who rather than leaving it to be argued.
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More what we build
Garden Apartments
Two to three story wood frame with surface parking. The cheapest way to build a unit in Florida, and it only works where land is cheap enough to spread out.
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Wrap & Texas Donut
Residential wrapped around a freestanding parking structure. More density than garden without the cost of building over the parking.
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Mid-Rise Concrete
Cast-in-place or precast concrete throughout. More expensive per square foot than wood and often the right answer anyway — particularly near the water.
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Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with it.
An inspection, photographs of what we found, and a written scope. If the honest answer is that it can wait another season, that is the answer you will get.