​Where’s the middle ground?  How does your design expert make the selections for you to choose from?  One thing is certain, it is not from guesswork!
 
From initial contact, through documentation and all the subsequent steps and stages that lead to project completion, your professional design team is getting to know you.  That important process is one that continues – not one that is addressed and then at some point, is considered complete!
 
Your design vision may start with definite and specific form, but – like many art forms -- it continues to evolve.  As the project develops and becomes real, the subtleties and nuances of the original vision mature and shift.  Within the desired concept, the vision grows as each new choice is made, and as circumstances may influence

​You’ve hired your Interior Design team, you have signed all the paper work, paid your retainer and are ready to embark on the project – at last!  After a lot of careful consideration, you made the decision to stay put and not vacate your home or business site while the design project gets underway, then all the way to completion.  You have planned to accommodate the various crews, area by area, by “moving over, exercising patience, trying to stay out of the way – and offering your help wherever it might save time or money.”
 
Oh, boy...   Sometimes what looks like a white flag of truce and peace can turn into a big red flag signaling confusion and trouble ahead!  So, let’s take a look at options.
 
In some cases, it’s not a matter of moving out when a project begins, but delaying moving in.  Circumstances, funds, and timing do not always play out in harmony; often there may not be a choice.   The project may have to go forward with everyone present and accounted for.
 
Assuming that best case is not possible, and the less desirable choice must be tolerated, it’s good to remember it can be managed!   While not the most desirable of circumstances, it is possible to successfully conduct an interior design project while the business or family remains on site.

​Like a table with a missing leg, a project without the appropriate collaborative team just won’t stand up to its responsibilities.   It’s an invitation for confusion, mistakes, delays and collapse.
 
It is a rare project that can find its way to satisfactory conclusion without an integrated team and a commitment to teamwork.  Even the smallest project has parts that depend on other parts, skills and talents that come from several sources.   And there may be complex aspects that require special expertise.
 
Your design team is an orchestrated collaboration of the resources that your professional designer has determined essential from your plan guidelines.  It is important to know who needs to provide what, at what point in the process and in conjunction with which other procedures!    Coordinating the players, timing their interface, having what each needs when they need it, is the overriding design within the master design plan.
 
When your interior designer comes on board to your project, there may already be an architect deeply invested in master plans and construction drawings.  Most architects have a network of affiliations with specific commercial and residential interior designers.  They ordinarily invite the appropriate “match” to participate in their contracted project.

The client is always “in charge!”  That’s why the game sometimes changes without warning from their side of the table. 
 
Your design team manages a large pool of resources – all of which have operational scenarios of their own.  That’s why the game sometimes changes without warning from their side of the table!
 
Your professional design team is familiar with these negative possibilities.   It can be disruptive, but circumstances do sometimes unexpectedly alter cases.
 
There is, of course, the very human menu of reasons:  illness, unexpected financial reversals, a rift among principals, legal and compliance changes and similar situations.  But, sometimes the reason seems to turn on a whim or a communication glitch.  Suddenly there is a significant change in the project’s complex; it can shake the project’s foundation as well as the relationships.
 
Management of a game change requires a commitment to solutions from all concerned.   Clear communication, revised documentation and sincere efforts toward understanding cause and effects are vital for re-stabilizing the project.   
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