Four projects a year, and the arithmetic behind itFour projects a year, and the arithmetic behind it

The number is a consequence, not a target

We did not decide to do four projects a year. We decided that whoever draws a room should be the person who answers the phone about it, and that a site visit should happen because something needs looking at rather than because it was in the diary. Four is what those two rules produce with the people we have.

Run the arithmetic the other way and it comes out the same. A house takes eleven to fourteen months from first visit to the last snag. Somebody senior is on site most weeks of the last five. Two people cannot hold more than four of those overlapping without one of them becoming a coordinator, and a coordinator is a different job from a designer.

What a bigger number would buy

More turnover, and a studio that survives losing a project. Those are not nothing, and we are not pretending the choice is free. What it costs is the thing clients actually notice: continuity. On a twenty-project studio the person at the first meeting is rarely the person at the last one, and every handover loses the reasons behind half the decisions.

The drawings survive a handover. The reasons do not.

What it means for you

You wait. The honest version of our availability is four to seven months for a full house, less for a single room, and we would rather say that at the first email than discover it together in month three. And you get one number to call, which sounds small until the tiler has a question at eight in the morning.