When Interior Designers Should Consider Doing a Feasibility Study Before Taking on Construction Projects
An interior designer recently reached out to us with a frustration. She was in the process of putting together a scope of work for a full-service design project that involved construction, and she was spending quite a bit of time researching the answers to several questions about what could/should be done in this home to meet the homeowner’s needs.
This interior designer didn’t go into a lot of detail about the nature of the questions she was trying to get answers to, but, yes, in a project that involves construction, often there are several considerations that need to be evaluated before the project direction and full scope of work can be developed.
The interior designer who reached out to us didn’t specify what avenues she was researching in order to put together a scope of work for her client, but she DID indicate she was putting in a LOT of uncompensated work merely to get a reasonable and workable SOW developed for her client.
Unpaid work???? Uh, no!
In a situation like this, where the appropriate design direction needs to be investigated, and questions need to be answered (perhaps getting conceptual pricing from contractors) BEFORE a SOW for a project can be definitively determined, a designer should not undertake this investigation as just part of their inquiry or sales process.
Don’t even think about doing it!!!!
Instead, an interior designer faced with needed investigation (determining the practicality or achievability of a particular scheme, getting conceptual cost info from contractors, scrutinizing the financial viability of a particular design direction) should let the client know that something else needs to happen first. In this case: a feasibility study needs to happen first.
What Is a Feasibility Study?
A feasibility study is an assessment of the practicality or viability of a project to help determine exactly what could or should be involved in that project in order to move forward. Within the interior design industry, a feasibility study looks at the aspects of a potential construction project that will impact the direction that a project takes (extent of construction, degree of alterations to be made, and the limits to what is possible).
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