Hiring an architect, engineer or any design professional isn’t easy. You’re making a decision and placing your trust in someone that will be responsible for a significant investment on your behalf. It’s critical you get it right.
Todd Decker, AIA
Principal, Farnsworth Group Inc., Greenwood Village
From the designer’s perspective, beginning a client relationship is a lot like getting your future father-in-law’s blessing. If you know the guy well and know what he values, you’re in pretty good shape. If you approach him for the very first time with a ring in your pocket, well then you’re taking a pretty big risk.
The designer’s conundrum isn’t in knowing how to do his job, it’s knowing what the client really wants from the designer and what value the client places on it.
Generally, a designer is hired with a summarized definition of the project, its scope and the required services needed to accomplish the goal. Too often this project definition is truncated into an oversimplified and vague sentence or two. Something like “a new 60,00-square-foot, core and shell, medical office building located at …” The rest is “TBD” or “as agreed to.” If the design process proceeds without further delving into the scope, it often leads to an architect working on a differing sense of assumptions than that of the client. Difficulties are the only definitive product of this vague process.
The most successful project experiences share a level of thoroughness early in the design process even before the pencils hit the paper – or the designers start their computer programs.
To help ensure a project gets started off on the right foot, the scope of a project should be well defined by including at least these 10 items: programming, budget/funding, quality, location/context, required approvals, design and performance standards, vision and goals, owner’s representation, construction procurement method and the schedule. In addition, key elements of the relationship should be clearly outlined: team structure, roles, responsibilities, project administration and communications. In a new working relationship, these are as important as the project definition.
These are the standards that an agreement for services should routinely be based upon, yet many of these items are deferred until later in the project’s timeline. That scenario usually leads to a collision course when the difference of understanding between the client and the designer collides – and often well into the design process. That means wasted time and money.
Projects in which the client retains the designer to help develop the project definition are routinely more successful, and they create a sense of team and camaraderie between the client and his design partner. While helping develop and define the project scope is not a service included in most standard agreements, it is one that many design firms can offer and owners find valuable.
The value comes from seasoned professionals consulting on the client’s success. The process is still creative – and can in fact enhance creativity – but is not yet hampered by the design process. This clarity of purpose results in a design that hits the mark more quickly by defining the success of the project up front, and one that has been agreed upon and fully understood by both the designer and owner. With all stakeholders on board, the foundation has now been laid for the design to begin and a path charted for a successful project.
In an era where only the “home run” projects get funded, project planning and definition are essential.
