When I was in school, the subject we talked least about, but since being out of school I wished I had known the most about – Specifications, aka “Specs.” These documents literally become binding contracts to the designs we create and if they don’t align with your designs – your designs won’t be created per …
Tag Archives: Interior design work loads
DESIGN SHADOW: ESTIMATING PROJECT HOURS AND TRACKING ORDERS
TIDLIC. At work we try very hard to be accountable to the hours it takes for a person who is assigned to a project or task. It’s the only responsible thing to do when it comes to keeping employees employed and running a financially sound business. To this end the Project Managers (PMs ) assign …
DESIGN SHADOW: INTERNATIONAL WORK IN AFRICA, PART CINQ (FIVE)
Yesterday was a great day even though I had to wear the same clothes for from 8 am on Thursday all the way through 4:30 pm on Friday; which included an 8 hour flight during the night. A consultant of ours, who lives here in Johannesburg (J-burg) was here to pick me up from my …
DESIGN SHADOW: INTERNATIONAL WORK IN AFRICA – PART TROIS (three)
This post is a continuous posting of a business trip to Africa. Go here for the first of the series post. Today we started the day by meeting as a group. Last night the rest of our Utah base team arrived – the lead Architect, and 3 of our consultants. With these new arrivals and the local …
DESIGN SHADOW: INTERNATIONAL WORK IN AFRICA PART DEUX (TWO)
The client and I woke up today with plans to head to the capital of Ivory Coast – Yamoussoukro. They have some buildings there we wanted to tour and inspect, including the Basilica for the Catholic Church. But we had a change of plans… The client and I were traveling with an interpreter to see …
DESIGN SHADOW on RENDERING
Today was a continuation of more time working with the renderers (affectionately labeled “render monkeys”) for a project. This particular client values renderings so much that we spend a lot of time on the front end to show design progression. Previous to today I had given them furniture cut sheets, light fixture designs/drawings and mill-work …
DESIGN SHADOW: TEST FIT
I received a cold call from a potential client the other day. This company’s executive had been referred to me and our company by a number of individuals. He asked if I could meet with him to explore the expansion of his business into a new commercial space – giving them potentially more square footage …
DESIGN SHADOW: LARGE SCALE MOCK-UP
Clients that will be putting a lot of capital towards a project, want to make sure their money is well spent. They are particularly concerned about getting everything they need and want. This is especially true when an Owner is building a large scale project that has many interest groups – or different users or …
DESIGN SHADOW: ADDITIONAL SCOPE
Often during the construction administration period (“CA“) or after a project is installed and “finished,” the client will often find things that they want to add to the project. This can be because things aren’t working as planned, or there were items they didn’t think they needed, but now do. These might be items that …
DESIGN SHADOW: WORK ORDERS & INVOICING
“Work orders”, or project scopes of work, have been coming in which is typical for this time of year. We have a client that contracts with us work to be done on many of their existing buildings. This year we are managing work for 15 of these buildings. This work can range from replacing and …
Design Shadow 