FEATURED ON THIS EPISODE:

JOIN MY UPCOMING WORKSHOP ON THURSDAY, MAY 8 AT 12:30 EST: HOW TO PRICE CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS WHEN YOU’RE MORE THAN JUST THE DESIGNER

JOIN THE WAIT LIST FOR MY REVAMPED COURSE INTERIOR DESIGNER’S GUIDE TO CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE:

WHY QUICK CONSTRUCTION DECISIONS AREN’T FREE

HOW TO TRACK AND UNCOVER YOUR ‘INVISIBLE’ LABOR

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR BOUNDARIES AND KNOW YOUR WORTH ON A JOB SITE

WHY BLENDING YOUR FEES IS THE QUICKEST WAY TO GET UNDERPAID

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Today’s episode is for every designer who has ever second guessed their worth on a construction project.

I have been in every scenario that I am talking about today, and I’m not going to apologize for not sugarcoating it because it is something that designers must get right if they are committed to being a profitable business and not a hobby.

I spent many years having my accountant tell me that, “Renee, what you’re doing is a hobby, you’re not making enough profits.” So if I can prevent just one of you, but ideally most of, it not all of you, from falling into this trap, then I’ll know that those years that I did were not wasted. 

Maybe you found yourself coordinating the trades, or answering questions that the contractor didn’t, or hopping on a quick phone call to solve a job site issue and you didn’t end up charging for it. 

Why? Well, if you are like me, it’s because in your head it was fast, it wasn’t real work, or maybe, you just didn’t even know how to label it. Or worse, you didn’t know how to defend it if the client called you out on it when you sent your time bill. 

This is something that took me years to understand. It is not about how much time a task took. It’s about the value that you delivered.

That one shift in your thinking changes everything about how you price your work, full stop.

It only took an hour or just a few minutes, and therefore you didn’t charge for it.

This can happen by the way, even if you’re flat fee. If you’re not tracking your time, and I mean all of it, you can’t look back and see if your flat fee truly covered your time spent. But today I want to focus on those who are still billing hourly, which I did for close to 23 years.

So let’s play a scenario out, because this has happened to me more times than I care to think about. Let’s say you’re sitting at your desk. You’re knee deep in a project, you’re in the mode, you’re locked in. The contractor calls from another job site and says, “Hey Renee, that location of the tub drain in that beautiful, expensive, showstopper primary bath you just designed, well, it falls on a floor joist. It’s gotta move. Six inches to the left or right. Which way do you want to go, Renee?” 

This happens. Like I’m always saying, shit happens on projects that you can’t predict when you’re creating your proposal. So now you’re faced with this decision. 

Do you A: Drop everything and run to the site? Maybe. 

B: You tell the contractor, look, I gotta review it. I gotta get back to you. Which potentially means he may lose a day or 2 depending on his schedule and the trades he has already lined up. 

Or C: You make the call in that moment. 

Those are all viable options and frankly, not one is better than the other. It just depends on what’s going on. But let’s say this is an easy one, and you can call it right in that conversation. You know that the towel bar will be installed on the right side of the tub. So if you’re moving that tub six inches to the right, so that means you’ll be closer to the towels and they could be hanging into the tub or even just look awkward. But placing it to the left, that may be too far away, meaning your client’s going to drip all sorts of water on the floor, every time they reach for a towel. That may be unsatisfactory. 

You’re doing all of this mental calculus in real time in just a few minutes. Then it’s done. You made your decision. Contractor’s thrilled, he moves on with his day, he hasn’t lost any time. You check the box, hopefully pat yourself on the back, and then return to the other project you were knee deep in.

No big deal, right? Again, this happens all the time. Except, you’re missing the fact that that one decision just potentially prevented a several day delay, it protected your design intent, it saved your client time, money, and frustration. Not to mention the contractor’s time, money, and frustration. 

So, let me be clear, that is not a ten minute task. The conversation probably didn’t even take ten minutes. That is the result of your experience, your vision, and your expertise. 

And yet so many designers, myself included, hesitate to charge for that moment. They’re stuck thinking in hours instead of outcomes. 

Honestly, my business model was to charge in 15-minute increments. So I might not have charged that call at all, especially if I was mid-task in someone else’s project. 

This industry has trained us to believe that our value is tied to how long something takes. But that’s just not true, especially when it comes to construction management. 

Fun fact, contractors don’t bill based on how fast they hammer a nail. And they certainly don’t bill less because they’ve gotten faster at it. Think about that. 

Architects, by the way, don’t discount their fees because they’ve done the same detail dozens of times. But yet they still bill every client as if they’re starting from scratch, with confidence. 

So why are we holding ourselves to a different standard? 

In my personal opinion, I think part of it is cultural. As women, right, only girls on the job site, many of us were never taught to view our time, let alone our expertise, as inherently valuable. We’re on the creative side of things. We’re artsy fartsy. We’re good spatially and visually. Right? We hear these things. So we downplay it. We call ourselves ‘just the decorator.’ The saddest part about it is that sometimes we’re the only ones who see ourselves that way on a site.

All of what I described above would be considered invisible work. A lot about construction management happens behind the scenes. That client did not see me on that call, making that expert judgment in that moment with the contractor. That client has no idea that you saved them time, money, and their intent. 

It’s the thinking, the planning, the what-if something goes wrong scenarios that you’re playing out while lying awake at 2AM, if you’re like me. It’s the constant tracking, checking, coordinating, all of it is invisible to the client, and frankly, to most of the team. 

And if it isn’t visible, they’re not thinking about it in those terms. They’re thinking, Renee gave me an answer. But all of that work is absolutely essential for a successful project to come to completion. 

While every trade is focused on their own task, we are holding their entire vision together.

That plumber isn’t thinking about how their work affects the speaker placement for the electrician three weeks from now. But you are. Because you designed it to flow together. You know what those end results need to be. And one decision by an individual trade can snowball or domino all the other decisions that you intended in your design. 

That kind of foresight, that kind of planning, that kind of holding space for the entire design attempt, well, if you’re not considering that value, you need to reconsider what you’re doing. 

If you are a designer struggling with this concept, here is what I recommend:

Take one full working week and jot down every construction related decision you made, big or small. I mean every single one of them. Every phone call, every approval, every, quote unquote, quick reply, every email, every just confirming text, I mean everything, including you thinking about something that may be coming up because you have a hunch that this one issue might snowball. So all of your time thinking about this project. 

I’m going to forewarn you, I don’t want you to lose steam halfway through when you see how much you’ve accrued on this one project, because that is the moment where everything begins to shift. Because I want you to then take that list, and look at your time log, and see what you are preparing to bill that client for that same week. You will be shocked by how many of the things you did, not planning to do, but actually did that week, you’re doing for free. 

And trust me, from my own personal experience, that is not sustainable. Ask yourself, “If I weren’t doing this, who would be? What would they be charging?” 

And more importantly, I want you to ask yourself, “Who is being affected by the fact that I’m not charging for it?” 

Do not beat yourself up while doing this exercise. This is to remind yourself that you matter, what you do matters, and more importantly, you deserve to be compensated for it, and fun fact, there are clients that recognize your value and will pay you for it. 

Now what?

You’ve gone through the exercise, you’re now aware of this invisible workload that you’re carrying. 

There’s also a mistake that compounds that problem. And that’s not clearly defining your role.

This is where the wheels can really fall off. You must declare your value and explain it to the client. And not just verbally, all of this should be put in writing. You put it in your contract, you spell it out in your proposal, and you say it clearly in your kickoff meeting so that the team, everybody on board, understands your role. 

Because when construction gets underway, and the questions start flying, silence is consent. So if you don’t speak up, everyone assumes you’re in charge – unless you have clarified your role. 

So if you haven’t priced for that level of responsibility, it will absolutely be a direct hit to your profitability, your time, and frankly, your sanity. 

How does this lack of clarity show up in proposals?

This is one of the most common pricing missteps I see – designers blending their fees into one flat rate. 

But here’s the truth: design and construction are not the same service. 

They don’t take the same time. They don’t follow the same rhythm. They don’t require the same kind of engagement. And most importantly, they don’t end at the same time. 

I see some designers who include ‘support during construction.’ Under a single flat design fee. But they get pulled into months of site visits, decisions, and coordination, with no additional compensation. That is why I will always strongly and almost insist that designers separate their fees, or at the very least, break them out into clearly defined phases with detailed scopes of work. 

This will be the only way you can protect your time as well as setting expectations for your client. 

We often blame the client

Look, she dragged me into this, she needed me for that. If you are not setting the expectations for that client, honestly, the blame sits with you.

If you’re still figuring out the level of support you want to offer to your clients, that’s totally ok and good that you’re still working through what you’re comfortable offering. But you have to price for what you’re actually committing to. 

So that when the inevitable scope creep happens, you need boundaries in place to say something like, “Well, Mrs. Smith, that wasn’t included in our scope of work..” And you can decide what you say next: I’d be happy to develop a new scope of work and present it to you by the end of the day. Or you can say nothing. It wasn’t in the scope of work.

Listen to Episode 223: Doing It All—And Getting Paid for Half

When I’m looking through a designer’s proposal and I see that their design fee is two or sometimes three times higher than their construction fee, one of two things is likely going on:

One, they’re offering consulting. Which is totally fine, if it was their intention. But here’s the catch: the client has to understand what consulting means. Do not assume that they understand what consulting means. But first, you need to understand what consulting means and explain it thoroughly to your client. Or the team has to know that you’re not managing day-to-day decisions. And again, you can’t assume they will know this. They didn’t see your contract with your client. You need to make this crystal clear to the team. And then, you have to be ok with not being looped in with every choice if you are consulting. 

This is where I see designers struggle the most. They say they’re just consulting, but then they feel frustrated, pissed off, slighted, dismissed, all of those adjectives, when decisions are made without them. And that’s because there is a disconnect, and that disconnect is a sign that the designers’ pricing and their boundaries don’t match. 

The second thing I see when a designer’s fee is two or sometimes three times higher than their construction fee is that a designer doesn’t fully understand what construction management actually entails. 

If your fee doesn’t reflect the level of responsibility talked about in today’s episode, then that’s probably because you haven’t done it enough or you haven’t been shown how to approach it the right way. 

Takeaways

It is not just about how long something took, it’s about the value your task delivered. And I’m hoping you’re aware now that the invisible work that we do every single day on every single project still counts. It doesn’t have to be on paper or you on a job site to be counted. 

And I’m sure this isn’t a big surprise, that scope creep happens when you stay quiet and don’t either present boundaries in the beginning, or worse, you present them but don’t protect them along the way. 

But I hope you’re also seeing that blending your fees is the fastest way to get underpaid. And the only person you can blame is yourself, and how you built your fees into the proposal. 

Lastly, if your design fee is double your construction fee, I want you to ask yourself why. Is it intentional? Are you consulting?