In the last newsletter, I asked for some feedback on how detailed you get in your designs. There were a few anomalies, but in general, here is a brief summary.
For those in Design/Build, it was interesting to me that 16 of the 26 who responded, included Planting as a detail they draw. That seems a bit high to me for D/B, so will make the assumption that most confused my question with a Planting Plan.
The vast majority, it seems, draw details for subcontracted items, which makes sense. But many draw no details at all, whether they are design only or design/build. In fact, out of 42 total responses (26 D/B and 16 D/O), there really was no significant difference between the level of detail provided.
As for my own experience, for the vast majority of my career, all design was done in house, and the contracting (everything from plants to pools to woodworking,fences, masonry you name it) was subbed out. Subcontractors were always part of the team, so we included them in working out design details. In many cases, the “details” were nothing more than descriptive text,”back of envelope” sketches, and photos. Rarely was there any misunderstanding, and we had a lot of success doing things that way.
That all said, there are advantages to providing more detail. We’ll save that discussion for another post.
