We advise before the architect is hired.
Influence over cost and performance is highest before an architect is hired.
Every project has a short stretch in which a decision still changes the outcome and costs almost nothing to make. It ends when the design work starts, because from then on a change means redrawing, re-coordinating and waiting, and the outcome moves less. The shaded field on the left of the curves below is that stretch.
A building project has several advisors, and each answers a different question.
We answer two of them. Both decide what the building does to the people inside it, and both have to be answered while the geometry is still open.
Everyone else works from the document those two answers produce: the search criteria, the brief the architect is chosen on, the rules a design is tested against and what gets measured after people move in.
- How will people perform here?
How people perceive, think and behave in spaces: what makes them productive, what makes them ill, what makes them stay. We answer it before the design starts, and the answer sets the floor plate.
- What does the building do to my organisation?
How should the building show where the organisation is today and where it is heading? Whether it needs a new face, and which habits and which parts of the culture it must not fix in place. What a building states about an organisation has to stay true to staff and to outsiders for as long as it stands.
The other questions, and who answers them
- Strategy consultants
What should the organisation do?
- Master planners
What can be built on the site?
- Workplace consultants
How should the space be laid out? Usually once the building is already fixed.
- Corporate real estate teams
What does it cost, and how is it procured?
A building project runs through eight stages, and we work in seven of them.
From the moment something forces the question to the day people move in, a building project runs for years and passes through dozens of hands. The eight stages below name each one, who else works in it and what we do there.
01
Project start
We run it What the project has to achieve for your organisation. Workshops with your leadership and the people who will use the building. The output is a shared baseline before capital is committed.
Produces: The Strategic Project Blueprint
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Your leadership and boardCorporate real estateYour financial advisors
01
Project start
What the project has to achieve for your organisation. Workshops with your leadership and the people who will use the building. The output is a shared baseline before capital is committed.
Produces: The Strategic Project Blueprint
More details
How long it takes
Six to eight weeks
The Strategic Project Blueprint Governs stages 02 to 08
- Project Intelligence Who the organisation is, how it actually works today, and what the building has to do for it.
- Scientific Foundation The scientific topics your project has to get right, named and put in order.
What follows, and who owns it
Everything else in this stage is the organisation’s own to answer, from whether it owns, leases or builds to who decides and what risk it accepts. Our documents take those answers as given.
02
Project requirements
We run it This is where most of our work happens. We research the scientific areas that matter for your project, search the databases and grade every finding for the quality of the study behind it. What comes out are concrete guidelines for later design choices, each one traceable to a named study. The architect and other advisors work from there.
Produces: The Decision Rulebook · The Evidence Design Brief
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Workplace and requirement consultantsSurvey and occupancy specialistsYour own organisation
02
Project requirements
This is where most of our work happens. We research the scientific areas that matter for your project, search the databases and grade every finding for the quality of the study behind it. What comes out are concrete guidelines for later design choices, each one traceable to a named study. The architect and other advisors work from there.
Produces: The Decision Rulebook · The Evidence Design Brief
More details
How long it takes
Eight to ten weeks
The Decision Rulebook Governs stages 04 and 05
Rules for design choices, each traceable to a named study. The competition brief in stage 04 is written from it and the design reviews in stage 05 are tested against it.
- Decision principles What the building is for, what wins when two good things compete, and who decides.
- Evidence-based rules A rule set for each of the eight topics, carrying the study behind it.
- Evaluation criteria What the building has to change in people, how that gets measured, and what it is worth.
- Trade-off and dispute logic Two kinds of conflict: priorities that compete, and studies that disagree.
The Evidence Design Brief Governs stage 03 onward
The studies behind every rule, graded, with the search and the reasoning shown. What a property search, a due diligence and a certification are tested against.
What follows, and who owns it
The user surveys, occupancy studies and test fits run alongside our search, and the people who do them do only that. We work from their results and do not repeat them.
03
Location and property
We advise We wrote the criteria a building has to satisfy. We stay to say whether the options actually on the table meet them, and to run the evidence against each one.
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Agents and transaction advisorsDue diligence teamsLawyers and tax advisorsCost and finance advisorsProject managers
03
Location and property
We wrote the criteria a building has to satisfy. We stay to say whether the options actually on the table meet them, and to run the evidence against each one.
More details
What we do here
The criteria are set with the decision rulebook. The buildings must now be tested against them. We take the options as the agents hand it over and test each candidate against what the evidence says the building has to do: which criteria a floor plate can carry, which it cannot, and what a compromise here would cost you later. We do not value the property and we do not build the business case.
What follows, and who owns it
Everything else here is a property process, with its own liabilities and its own regulators, and it stays with the agents, the due diligence teams and the lawyers.
04
Design team
We advise We wrote the brief and what the jury judges against. We help you pick the right team, not by running new research, but by knowing what the brief was for.
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Competition and procurement advisorsProject managers
04
Design team
We wrote the brief and what the jury judges against. We help you pick the right team, not by running new research, but by knowing what the brief was for.
More details
What we do here
The blueprint and the rulebook are not a brief. They are what a brief gets written from. Turning them into one is separate work, and it belongs in this stage: every competition and every tender wants a different document, so provide the format the procedure demands, on request. The criteria the jury scores against are aligned with the rules already published, so the assessment is held to the same evidence the rest of the project is. When the proposals come back we identify which team has understood it. We do not run the procedure, and we do not sit on the jury unless you ask us to.
What follows, and who owns it
The procedure itself is sometimes a regulated process, tightly so in the public sector. We have no standing in it.
05
Design and engineering
On request We assess design proposals against the rules, and supply the data and the evidence behind them, including whatever a certification asks for. We do not plan and we do not manage the process.
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The architectEngineersSpecialist designersCertifiers and cost consultants
05
Design and engineering
We assess design proposals against the rules, and supply the data and the evidence behind them, including whatever a certification asks for. We do not plan and we do not manage the process.
More details
What we do here
This is the architect's stage. The rulebook is already in the architect's hands, and every design review is held against it. Where you want a certification, we supply the evidence and the project-specific data it asks for, and say what the certificate is actually worth on this project.
What follows, and who owns it
Everything after the brief is design and engineering. The rules we set together early in the process are in their hands.
06
Construction
Not us Cost, schedule, quality, interfaces, site. Project managers own every part of it, and there is nothing here we would add.
Project managersSite supervision
06
Construction
Cost, schedule, quality, interfaces, site. Project managers own every part of it, and there is nothing here we would add.
More details
What follows, and who owns it
Delivery runs from the first award to the day the keys change hands, and it is a management discipline throughout. This is the one stage where we add nothing at all.
07
Occupation
On request We make sure you act on what you decided at the beginning, at exactly the point in a project where it is easiest to quietly forget to follow through.
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Commissioning engineersMove and change managers
07
Occupation
We make sure you act on what you decided at the beginning, at exactly the point in a project where it is easiest to quietly forget to follow through.
More details
What we do here
A building is handed over in the weeks when everyone is tired and the decisions taken earlier are easiest to quietly oversee. We come back and check: are the rules of use the organisation agreed to actually in place, and is the building being occupied the way the brief said it would be. What has drifted gets named while it can still be fixed.
What follows, and who owns it
The handover itself is technical and logistical work. It belongs to the people who commission systems and move organisations, and they are better at it than we would be.
08
Operation
On request We measure whether the intent held, and document what worked, so you have something to tell your own people, from evidence rather than assertion.
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Facility managementYour workplace team
08
Operation
We measure whether the intent held, and document what worked, so you have something to tell your own people, from evidence rather than assertion.
More details
What gets measured
- People How people work, concentrate, recover and behave in the building, against the outcomes the project was meant to move.
- The rules Each rule from the rulebook, held against what the building actually delivers a year in.
- Use The paths people take, the rooms that get used and the ones that do not, read against what the brief assumed.
The measurements go back into the blueprint and the rulebook, so a second project starts from the first one’s results. A technology partner builds the measuring software.
What we do here
A year in, we measure the building against the decision rules it was governed by: use, conditions and running cost. Satisfaction measurement stays with your workplace team. We document what worked, so you can tell your own people what the building did and show the figures behind it.
What follows, and who owns it
Running the building is its own operation on its own cycle, and it belongs to the teams who are there every day.
What we produce
Project start
Project requirements
- Strategic intent
- Priority hierarchy
- Decision governance
- Research translation
- Environmental rules
- Spatial rules
- Nature rules
- Material rules
- Outcomes
- Performance indicators
- Assessment methods
- Value
- Competing priorities
- Contested evidence
- Resolution
- Phase application
- Stakeholder roles
- Binding strength
Stages 01 and 02 of the table above: the three sessions with your people, the eight research areas and the three reports.
Our fee is fixed before an architect is hired.
Our fee covers stages 01 and 02, and it is the same whatever is decided in stages 03 to 08. We do not design, deliver or certify, and we take no share of anything that gets built. The decision rules are written before the money is committed.
The rulebook applies to the whole building, because the research that describes how a person concentrates also describes how a person decides. It covers the shop floor, the floor where the staff sit, the meeting room where a client says yes, the ward where a patient recovers and the lobby a visitor sees first.
We do not ask people what they want.
Preference surveys
We gather what we need from your organisation: how it works, what it is for, where it is going. We do not put a thirty-year decision to a preference survey. What people say they want and what measurably helps them perform are different questions, and the rulebook is built on the second.
Statutory consultation
Where the law requires consultation, through a works council or public-sector staff representation, we write what it has to be based on. We do not run it.
Internal communication
Communicating the change to your people is leadership’s work. We give you the evidence and the reasoning to do it with. We do not stand in front of your staff on your behalf.
We start with a Decision Brief.
We take three weeks and charge a fixed fee. The report is yours even if we stop there.
What that involves →