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Bringing design in house to own the schedule

I turned Tellus into a design-build firm because the drawings decide when a project starts and what is in it.

Tellus began as a plan-expediting service that lost money, aimed at making permit approvals more predictable. Then I had to choose how far to carry the idea. I carried it all the way, bringing architecture and interior design inside and moving the firm from contractor to design-build.

Selling design was never the point. The point was that whoever holds the drawings holds the start date and the scope. With design outside the firm, every job ran on another party's calendar and another party's scope decisions.

The result was a quoting advantage. Tellus could price an entire project in more than twenty California jurisdictions, plus Southern Oregon and Arizona, while competitors still had no drawings. I also learned to read architecture as an architect does, which still informs how I sit on either side of an owner and architect table.

Hold the drawings and you hold the schedule. The rest of preconstruction follows from that choice. I did not do it to become an architect. I did it because I would not stay at someone else's mercy on my own clients' timelines.

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