Planning

Most building projects are intended to fulfill a purpose. They are to serve as a means of facilitating a business or a practice. But more than that, they communicate something about that business or practice. Therefore, it is important to define what it is the building is suppose to do, how it is suppose to accommodate the owner’s needs, what message will it send, what size it needs to be, and how much it will cost. It is important to define all this before the owner spends a dime.

At McLauchlin & Company, we believe it is ultimately important to determine where you are going and how you are going to get there by making informed decisions. That is why we help our clients define the building project by identifying all the functional spaces needed in the building to accomplish the goals, to comply with code and to accommodate the owner’s needs. We call this “PROGRAMMING”; preparing a guide for the design that tells you everything about your building, including what is in it, how big it is, how long it will take to build it and how much it will cost, before you make any commitment.

Programming is like preparing a road map, so you know where you will end up before you even start. Proper planning and programming is placed at the beginning of a project, before design decisions are fixed and changes become costly.