Like a table with a missing leg, a project without the appropriate collaborative team just won’t stand up to its responsibilities. It’s an invitation for confusion, mistakes, delays and collapse.
It is a rare project that can find its way to satisfactory conclusion without an integrated team and a commitment to teamwork. Even the smallest project has parts that depend on other parts, skills and talents that come from several sources. And there may be complex aspects that require special expertise.
Your design team is an orchestrated collaboration of the resources that your professional designer has determined essential from your plan guidelines. It is important to know who needs to provide what, at what point in the process and in conjunction with which other procedures! Coordinating the players, timing their interface, having what each needs when they need it, is the overriding design within the master design plan.
When your interior designer comes on board to your project, there may already be an architect deeply invested in master plans and construction drawings. Most architects have a network of affiliations with specific commercial and residential interior designers. They ordinarily invite the appropriate “match” to participate in their contracted project.
Similarly, general contractors have their tested and reliable resources. Depending on the nature of the project, they select the right collaborators for the job.
The process of developing the desired project vision frequently starts with your professional Interior Designer. Many prospects want to work through the basic ideas of their envisioned environment with their design professional before they take the step toward selecting their architect and general contractor.
As with the other relevant collaborators mentioned above, your interior designer has a network of architects, general contractors and myriad sub-contractors. From that familiar and experienced inventory, your designer will build the project team that best matches your design vision.
It is reasonable to have a team of collaborators with proven experience in the kind of project into which they are invited. Each business venue has very specific needs and characteristics. For instance, a hospitality industry client would naturally want a team with experience in that industry – with knowledge in all the very specific requirements, compliances, regulations, amenities and nuances necessary for projects that serve the public. Similar logic would fit with other business venues and with residential interior design.
It is also true that many venues have similar characteristics and design requirements. Your designer will recognize what resources are appropriate for your design vision. While many firms (Design, Architectural or General Contracting) have exclusive specialties to the exclusion of projects in other venues, most will clarify such limitations. Others may embrace a variety of venues for consideration, and, if so, should have the appropriate talent and skills available within their organization or by contracting. Just ask!
You want to be sure you are entering your project with the right expertise on board. Gambling with a “jack-of-all-trades” is a gamble you don’t want to take! What you want is a balanced team made up of the right experts, collaborating in the best interests of your design vision.
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
