Too many thoughtful designs are diluted by the time they’re built. Yours needn’t be.
Visionary design always means taking risks. Traditionally, the riskiest step is handing off the design documents to let the construction team take over. However, by ensuring breakthrough design solutions can stay intact for your clients, you’ll help shape environments and experiences that deliver on the full potential to spark brilliance.
Surprise costs and technical issues throw a wrench into any plan, which can result in design changes that impact the design vision – and not always for the better. Rising materials costs, economic volatility, supply chain challenges and labor shortages are further complicating project delivery.
Fortunately design leaders can navigate these obstacles with a few team culture and structure considerations to help assure project delivery remains true to your team’s original vision. Consider the following three tactics to secure the integrity of the design throughout the process:
1. Create a culture that challenges the way things have always been done. There is no one “office of the future” or best office layout applicable across all organizations. Outside-the-box thinking is key to the people-centric design today’s leading organizations need. By inspiring your team to think strategically, you’ll be able to forge singular client designs that are so tailored for their people’s success, they won’t be willing to water it down.
2. Nurture design autonomy. Fresh, diverse perspective—not hierarchy—drives ingenuity. Recognize the unique strengths of your team members, from rockstar junior employees with novel ideas, to experienced senior leadership. Then empower each of them to take ownership and bring their best. With ego-free collaboration at all levels, your dynamic team will be better equipped to develop and realize world-class design.
3. Align with delivery teams early on, and through completion. Partnering with construction teams beyond the initial design phase and through delivery provides you with real-time insight into how things like supply chain challenges are affecting project realization—and what you can do to problem-solve pragmatically, together. With a seat at the table throughout the process, you can make sure on-site changes honor the design, and ultimately help break the mold when it comes to space delivery.
After two years of decision paralysis, companies are recognizing we are not going back to a pre-pandemic work environment, so offices need to be re-envisioned to accommodate hybrid work. However, fast, on-budget project delivery that aligns with the original design vision the client fell in love with is particularly challenging amidst record-high inflation, persistent supply chain challenges, and materials shortages. By challenging the way the design to construction team handoff has always been done, both designers and clients win.
