The role of the studio
Sole interlocutor for every figure involved, the studio expresses in coordination the operational form of its strategic value. Engineers and installers, the contractor, tilers, artisans and suppliers communicate with us. Technical instructions leave from the studio, the trades’ questions arrive at the studio, and variations are assessed and communicated by us. When this pattern fragments and the client begins giving direct instructions to those working on site, the project loses direction. The client takes part in the decisions that belong to them, from aesthetic direction to the approval of proposals to the validation of costs, and operational management rests with us.
In the field it often happens that the interior designer arrives after the technical choices, with structure and systems already defined, and the interiors shrink to an adaptation to constraints set by others. Our method starts instead from the vision of the inhabited space. The distribution of rooms, the position of furniture and the quality of light are defined first, the systems integrate into that design and the specialists bring their expertise within coordinates already fixed.
The figures involved
The composition of the team varies with the nature of the intervention. Listed buildings, significant structural changes and complex systems call for structural engineers, thermal specialists and consultants for home automation or acoustics, while more contained work involves fewer figures. Each professional answers to the studio, which holds the overall vision and checks that the contributions of the individual disciplines coexist without friction, and technicians already chosen by the client enter the process fully. We hold no commercial agreements with contractors or suppliers, so the assessment rests on demonstrated competence and on the ability to work within a structured method.
The division of responsibilities
The studio answers for the design, from the choices to the drawings to the correspondence between intentions and built result. Contractor and artisans answer for execution, with the drawings translated into work, the specifications respected, the quality of workmanship and the correct functioning of what is installed. This division is declared before the start and written into the contractual documents, because establishing in advance where one competence ends and the other begins keeps problems from bouncing between parties with no one taking charge.
Project documentation
Before any work begins, every figure involved receives a complete set of information:
- Bill of quantities and specification: quantities, technical specifications and the expected level of finish for every item;
- Programme: sequence of activities, dependencies between works, delivery dates for supplies with long production cycles;
- Working drawings: dimensioned plans, sections, construction details, admissible tolerances;
- Quality references: approved samples, prototypes and photographs that fix the level to be reached;
- Critical points: works requiring specific checks, foreseeable interferences, passages where an error costs dearly.
Systems drawings, construction details, sections and schedules are the language through which the studio speaks to those who build. Graphic precision becomes decisive at the interfaces between different works and on the elements that admit no correction, such as the dimensions of niches for bespoke furniture, the positions of water outlets, the alignment of joints and jambs.
Managing communications
Relevant communications travel on documentable channels, between email, written reports and minutes, while technical documents live in shared archives where every file carries a date and revision number. Prints on site are updated at every change and superseded ones withdrawn. Variations touching several disciplines are weighed for their overall impact before being communicated, and whoever the variation does not concern is left out of the exchange, because multiplying recipients disperses attention. Coordination meetings follow a regular rhythm and address the open issues together. Problems discussed aloud are always fixed in writing, because what is undocumented ends up never having been said.
Control on site
Control accompanies the entire process, from the drawings checked before the site opens, to the match between drawings and built work during the works, to the functioning of every component at the end. The most delicate passages concern bespoke work and systems provisions. An electrical chase moved by twenty centimetres can mean a socket visible where it was destined to vanish, and a wrong dimension on a blind box means redoing the false ceiling. These are errors prevented by checking while the chases are still open and the structures bare. The studio follows the site at a frequency calibrated to the phase in progress, daily at the delicate moments, and on distant sites a local representative works in constant contact with us. Irreversible works require explicit approval, and no cladding is laid nor any bespoke element put into production without formal confirmation.
Selecting contractors and craftspeople
When contractors and artisans have not already been chosen by the client, the selection looks beyond price:
- Documented previous work: sites that can be visited, photographs, clients willing to share their experience;
- Specific experience: familiarity with the type of intervention, with the materials envisaged, with the level of quality expected;
- Samples: executional quality judged on prototypes or portions of work;
- Company structure: an organisation matched to the scale of the project, financial stability, continuity of personnel;
- Handling of difficulties: how problems and contingencies were met on previous sites.
The expected level is declared before the start, and whoever accepts the engagement knows what is being asked of them.
The boundaries of collaboration
Coordination works if everyone respects it. A client dealing directly with the contractor on technical matters introduces information capable of contradicting instructions already given, and a supplier going over the studio’s head alters schedules already fixed. These interferences produce errors destined to surface on site, when correcting them is expensive. Without direction, each party optimises its own portion with no view of the whole, so the installer chases where it suits him, the plasterboarder closes up before the checks and the tiler starts from the wrong point. This is why operational communications pass through the studio. The client is informed of everything, approves the relevant choices and may always raise questions, and technical management rests with us. If an external consultant proposes solutions incompatible with the project, we open a discussion on the constraints and look for the soundest technical mediation. Projects that touch the building community or require permits bring these matters inside the coordination, from working hours to noise limits to scaffolding permits, to be handled before they can stop the site.
What changes when there is a single coordinator
Coordination is the work that holds all the others together. It does not appear in the photographs of the finished project, and yet without it that result would not exist in the form intended. Our method serves to keep the site from sliding into continuous repair, and the costs of disorganisation from falling on the client.
