Designer Recommendation for Leveling Up Your Enterprise
Most of us strive to take our businesses to the next level through new challenges. As our experience develops, we want to continue to encourage more growth, whether it’s through serving a new luxury client, breaking into design-build, or leaping from residential to commercial design (or vice versa).
When you do land a new dream project, what can you do to make sure it’s successful when you don’t quite have a depth of experience. . . yet?
I recently sat down with Kate Rasmussen of Wade Weissmann Architecture on my podcast “A Well-Designed Business,” and she talked about this very thing—successfully taking on new projects with a different scope than what you’ve done before.
Scope it out—accurately
One of the biggest pieces of the puzzle when breaking into something new is the proposal. How do you estimate a timeline and rate when you’re doing something you’ve never done before?
Getting the estimate right is crucial for both your sanity and profitability. I think back to my conversation with Kimberly Merlitti, who owns KMM Consulting in Washington, D.C.. Merlitti is a strong proponent of building a detailed, accurate estimate before you sign a contract. She emphasized that with time-tracking and data, you can create a clear picture of project costs. Merlitti recommends breaking every project down, piece by piece, room by room, until you have the entire estimate scoped out. This information should come from data you have collected from your previous projects.
That work and clarity can lead to success when you begin to tackle larger and different types of work as well. Rasmussen’s advice for creating a proposal for a new project involves leaning on what you already know to help determine what you don’t yet. She gave this example: If you know it takes X number of hours to create a 50-page draw set, you can use that information to predict how long a 120-page one might take.
It may sound tedious to review and capture this data for every project and estimate new proposals in such high detail, but this is exactly what profitable firms do. It is vital for a healthy business to capture data, because it is what will enable you to set benchmarks, goals, and fees.
The critical takeaway? Our data shows us where we’ve been so we can map out where we want to go.
Seek advice
What happens when an opportunity is completely new and you lack data to look back on? This is where you can turn to your staff (if you have a bigger firm like Rasmussen) or other professional peers.
The key in reaching out to colleagues is to ask someone in a different market from your own, which will help avoid the fear that you both may be going after the same local project. If you have your first shot at working with a new luxury builder in your area, but you aren’t sure what your proposal should include or what benchmarks you need in your pricing, call a colleague.
