Program
Program is a formal term used in commercial projects so don’t worry if you’ve not heard the term before - it’s not as common in discussions about housing. A program is the collection of your needs and wants for your project, whether you’re building a new home or renovating/adding to an existing home.
Your needs are your must-have items like a minimum number of bedrooms. Needs can include other amenities like design for mobility, aging in place a home office or whatever functional requirements must be satisfied.
Wants are additional amenities that you’d like to include though you’d still live in the house if they’re not present. Your list of wants could also include things that could be added at a later date without much disruption to the existing work. For example, if a swimming pool isn’t in your budget, we can design the electrical and plumbing systems for an installation at a later date.
In terms of performance, you might determine one level of performance is a need while a higher level of performance is a want. We can work toward the needed level of performance that will yield the health, comfort and efficiency threshold you’ve set with an eye out for any opportunities to achieve a higher level of performance as the design and construction progress.
Communicating Your Vision
Try to communicate style in your program. You have a vision for the spaces when you think about them - what you see in your mind’s eye. Sharing that vision allows us to better understand what you wish to achieve even if that vision evolves as the design is developed.
You can use images of spaces to start a discussion if you don’t have a clear vision. The images don’t have to represent the entire space. You might share an image and tell us you only like a specific part and don’t care for other parts. It’s also important to know what don’t like.
Internal Reconciliation
Each family member should develop her/his program separately. That gives everyone a voice and bring more ideas to the table for discussion.
Families should try to share and reconcile as much of their individual programs as possible before starting the design process. That keeps you from having to do it while also paying for design services and it helps reduce changes resulting from a lack of communication.
Interview
Don’t try to make a perfect program. You don’t have to map out every square foot of each space.
We’ll interview you with your program in hand to learn more about your program, if there was participation from each family member and if there’s anything about which you want some guidance.
There may be holes in your program where you didn’t know if a design is possible or practical. We’ll be happy to work with you to develop solutions.
Scope of Work/Scope Creep
The program that results from your work and our refinement sets the scope of work for the project. It’s what we use to drive the design and set priorities for investment in the work.
Preventing scope creep is one of the most important uses for the program. For example, if there are attempts to add elements to the program as the design develops, we can revisit the program to determine why that wasn’t important in the initial vision.
There are often revisions to a program as the design develops. Still, the program remains a useful tool for evaluating any significant additions to the program - especially budget busters that will affect other parts of the work.
In Conclusion
Your program doesn’t have to be a formal document. Some people bring binders of material to us, some people share a Pinterest page and some people just want to be interviewed. We’ll meet you wherever you are in your process and support you from that point forward.
We’ve created a program template you can use if you’d like to get some notes together. Just contact us to request a copy so we can send you a PDF via email.
Thanks for learning about the program.
The final step in this series is learning about pricing.
This is the second page in a series of four pages: