Involving Design Professionals Early in the Project Process

A Theatre Consultant's design fees are a small fraction of the project cost. Invest in someone's experience, knowledge, and abilities to help your project be as grand as your vision. Design it right from the outset and you will only have to upgrade equipment due to age and wear — not because of dysfunctional or unsafe concepts.

The Theatre Consulting industry is small, and we all compete for many of the same projects. However, we also realize that we must police our own ranks to keep collusion at bay, fees reasonable, and quality high. To that end, most legitimate independent theatre consultants work with high ethics and try to create a level playing field where bidding contractors may fairly compete. Furthermore, most of us will provide a potential client, if asked, a list of our competitor's from which they may also solicit proposals. We're all knowledgeable and can bring good value to a project. Each has unique ideas, personalities, and experience that differentiate us from each-other and the rest of the professional design industry.

Be reasonable about design fees:

As mentioned before, the elves and the fairies don't come in the night to make these systems magically appear. Someone has to design them, specify them, and make sure that they get installed correctly. That is the Theatre Consultant's job. The Theatre Consultant makes their living based upon billable hours for project work. You have employed someone that is continually re-educating themselves for your benefit. This is done via participation in industry trade expositions, conventions, and standards committees. This reduces the amount of time available for project work but must non-the-less be supported by the project fees.

Don't waste their time, and they can expend more effort on the actual tasks of designing your facilities' systems. Be prepared for meetings, be willing to read-up on the subject, and take the time to read the documents they have prepared for you.

You didn't hire them to teach you all they know — you hired them because what they know will make your project as good as it can be within your budget.

Fees are not typically a percentage of the systems costs.

A project takes many hours to complete, and the amount of time required is largely dependant upon the overall scope of the project, not how expensive the equipment is. Small sophisticated systems can take more time to design and administer than large simple ones. Therefore, design fees are not always proportionate to the equipment budget. Regardless of the size or complexity of the system, there will always be a minimum number of hours expended on programming, design, documentation, bid administration, shop drawing review, site visits, and owner training. You are paying for your consultant's expertise, respect them enough to understand that they know what is involved in the start-to-finish completion of a job of your scope and magnitude.

Involve them from the outset.

A good Theatre Consultant will help you through the critical programming phase by helping you to ask the right questions and find the right answers. As design development begins, a clear set of building and operational criteria will allow you to create a space that solves challenges and accommodates the technical productions systems. A good theatre is designed from the inside-out, not vice-versa. Don't make your technical systems designers force-fit something into an ill-conceived space. This places unnecessary compromises on the systems designs and drives costs upward with little or no benefit to the end-users. Even when you are renovating an existing space or converting / repurposing a ‘found space’, there can be many opportunities to take advantage of an easy fit, verses making difficult-to-implement design choices.

Don’t be afraid to divide the project into functional segments. It is very common to employ a consultant to program the facility or project, but not actually go into the finite design process. This is helpful for both the consultant and the owner, as it gives everyone involved a chance to discuss the project openly while not committing to any specific design concept. Ideally, by the end of the programming phase the project will have some specific goals, budgets, and design direction identified. This can help the consultant prepare a proposal for systems design services that accurately reflects the effort required to layout and document the systems identified in the programming phase.

This is particularly true for renovation projects – dividing the design work into an ‘Assessment Phase’ and then a “Design Phase’ can be very helpful. The Assessment Phase is very similar to the Programming Phase, and it adds the observation / measurement of the existing facility so that a baseline understanding of the building and/or equipment can be documented.

The Design Phase (sometimes called the CD or Construction Document Phase) should encompass the work all the way through the final construction (CA or Construction Administration) and systems commissioning. This includes:

• Reviewing shop drawings for conformance with the original specifications and drawings.
• Preparing responses for Requests For Information (RFI’s).
• Job site observation trips to check that infrastructure is being properly constructed and installed.
• Checking to see that the final installation is done properly and correctly adjusted.
• Review the ‘As-Installed’ (or As-Built) drawings for completeness.
• Review of Operations & Maintenance (O&M) manuals.

A Performing Arts building is a complex machine that must be properly operated and maintained, so it is also advisable to employ your consultant to train the staff about the many capabilities and functionality that has been designed into your new venue.