Before the drawing

Architects, engineering practices, surveyors and technical consultancies: more than a million firms in Europe. What they all have in common is that they sell hours, and the hours worth selling are the ones a senior person spends being senior.

The trouble is how few of those hours there are in a week. Before anyone can be senior at anything, somebody has to read the planning rules that apply to the site, gather every consultant's latest drawing into one place, and chase the client for the survey that has been missing for three weeks. None of that is the work, all of it is required, and most of it lands on the person whose time is the most expensive in the building. Agents are unusually good here. For example, reading the local planning document and coming back with the six rules that apply to this plot. Keeping track of which revision each consultant is working from, and saying so the day two of them disagree. Asking the client for the missing survey every Tuesday until it arrives, which no one enjoys doing and everyone forgets.

That being said, an architect or an engineer signs their work, and a signature is a promise that a person stands behind what is on the page. To that end, our embedding process for design and engineering practices puts the person at the end of every chain. For example, your agent drafts and never issues. Everything it asserts is traceable back to the document it came from, so checking it is a matter of following a line rather than trusting a tone. And it works from a copy, so the file it read is the file that is still there afterwards.

If you sell your expertise by the hour, every hour an agent gives back is an hour you can sell. If you're interested in the advantages an agent can give your business, click here to let us know more about your business.