What? What do you mean the project is stuck? Well, what we mean is that something (or someone!) is off point or off the track. Or, a serious mistake or misunderstanding has occurred that does not meet the goals of your Interior design Vision projections or scheduling.
A bog down can occur on any side of the issues and from either the Client or the Interior designer or team. And anyone involved should surely be comfortable saying: “Wait a minute…” to the rest of the project participators when and if something goes wrong.
No one wants to bring things to a halt – after all, there are goals set at the beginning of your project with target dates throughout the entire Interior design project, right to the completion time frame.
Stops, pauses, delays and hang-ups are enemies of carefully laid out planning schedules.
It is important that each process in the project progress synchronizes with its neighboring procedures!
You don’t want the painting contractor showing up before the sheet rock is in place; or, furnishings and equipment arriving two weeks before the flooring is completed. Just a few moments of thought can show you how many schedules – and delivery dates – can be compromised with just one aspect missing its cue.
So, how does an Interior design project get thrown off base, disrupting coordinated scheduling and bogging down everything? There are just too many possibilities. Some just happen; it’s the nature of the beast! But others should have and could have been avoided. So let’s look at two situations that are typical.
What if – at some point – the hidden agenda of an unknown silent vote comes out of the blue and slams right into an Interior design project that is smoothly rolling along? Well, sometimes, a Client may have a behind-the-scenes advisor with an opinion they respect, but who is unknown to the Interior design team – and who participates in the project, but covertly!
Out of seeming nowhere, decisions that have been made and acted upon may be suddenly revoked. It could be the color scheme, or the period theme, or the choice of a sub-contractor – any one of which issues can have a ripple effect that brings a well timed project to a screeching halt.
Another very difficult situation may develop when the Client budget may not have been accurately represented – kind of like when your mom would say your eyes were bigger than your stomach when you ate too much candy and got sick later! If anything can bring an Interior design project to an abrupt halt, it’s when a Client suddenly says: Stop! I’m out of money! Sometimes, the Client’s tastes and choices just do not fit their financial parameters.
In either of these scenarios, your Interior designer will need to put the brakes on – and fast! In the first example, the designer must encourage the Client to coax that silent veto out of the shadows and have them participate in a way that can incorporate their input with the overall decision-making process, and do so in a non-disruptive manner.
In the second example, the solution may be a bit more troublesome and a bit more difficult. Up to a point, the financial information and stability that a prospective client furnishes to an Interior design firm is taken on good faith. However, simply receiving the agreed design fees does not guarantee to your Interior designer that the assured financial stability implied by that prospective Client can be depended upon for other aspects of the project.
Honesty and transparency speak loudly to the necessity of preventing your Interior design project from damaging bog-downs!
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.
