Six stages, one accountable programme.

What you actually receive at each stage

Not a single render and an invoice. Space planning hands you two or three layout options drawn to scale, with circulation and storage volume marked. Design intent hands you elevations for every wall, a material schedule naming every grade and finish, and a lighting layout. The estimate is priced against that exact schedule, line by line, so a change to one decision has a visible, isolated cost rather than moving the whole number.

Why sign-off is the date that matters most

Before sign-off, changing a layout, a carcass size or an electrical position costs nothing — it is a line on a drawing. After sign-off, the factory has cut to that drawing and the electrician has run conduit to those points, so the same change means unpicking finished work. We tell you plainly, at every stage, whether a decision is still free to change or already locked.

What 'accountable programme' means in practice

One project manager tracks the programme against the dates agreed at sign-off, and tells you early — with a reason — if something is going to slip. Most slippage traces back to a change requested after sign-off rather than to the studio's own production, which is exactly why the sign-off drawing is treated as fixed.

Why six stages rather than fewer

Each stage ends with something you can check — a layout, a drawing, a price, a physical component — rather than a verbal assurance that things are on track. Compressing stages to move faster usually means skipping the checkpoint, not skipping the work, and the work still has to happen eventually, at a worse time to catch a mistake.

What a well-run programme actually protects

Not just the date — the ability to change your mind cheaply. A programme with clear stage boundaries tells you exactly how much a change costs at any given moment, which is what lets you make good decisions under time pressure instead of guessing.

Why manufacture and installation sit inside the same programme as design

Because a drawing that the factory cannot build to a tolerance, or a detail the installer cannot execute cleanly, is not actually finished — it just looks finished on paper. Running all six stages under one studio means those constraints are caught at the design stage, not discovered on site.

What a client's actual workload looks like across the six stages

Heaviest at understand, plan and design intent, where decisions get made; light during manufacture, where the factory is executing an approved drawing; brief again at install and handover, for walkthroughs and sign-off. Most of the calendar time is stage five, which needs the least of your attention.

What we would change about this process if we could

Very little at this point — most of the structure exists because an earlier version of a project taught us why a step was missing. The programme is closer to a settled discipline than an experiment, which is exactly why it is documented this explicitly.

Does a repeat client go through all six stages again?

Yes, at the same rigour — familiarity with a client does not shorten the survey or the drawing stage, because each project is measured and specified against its own room, not the last one.