The first few weeks are under my belt now. It has been daunting and exciting and many other emotions since starting, I am on another steep learning curve which is all to the good (Outliers: The Story of Success here I come!) as far as I can see.

One aspect that intrigues me, and I feel I have not completely settled on how to progress, is the design process. Now as The Designer one has time to design, research, design some more, that’s what you ‘job’ is. But as a designer for design and build company it’s not entirely the same. The job is: design, fast; sell the design, fast; cost and quote it; schedule it; detail the construction, fast; project manage, at the fastest pace you can, and let me say thats 4 or 5 jobs at a time not 1 at a time!

In all this I find the methods taught to me at college are simply too time consuming, perhaps I am still a slowcoach though? Drawing up a basic 3d model takes me 1.5-2 days (depending on how much visual material there is for reference and how good the survey is). Sketch plan, for a large garden (2 acres plus and still my bette noir) another couple of days with cogitating and inspiration finding in between. Rendering elevations and perspectives at least 1 maybe 2 days. But it seems as if the time frame for all is budgeted at about 3 days, max!

I need to speed up!

Beginnings of a sketch plan for front and side gardens

Aerial view from rear, trees as circle

That said, I did re-design and draw up a front garden in 4 hours last week!