D Wright article on proposals

[garethace]

http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/article7_DW.asp

 

What about selling an architect a story board first about what you wish to achieve with your visualisation?

[dwright]

Agreed, sometimes is a good idea, but every now and then it works against you. It is a lot of work to draw a complex interior space out of blueprints, and then architects will correct you on your storyboard drawings worried that you do not perceive the space correctly. I believe that is better in my opinion to use words, it leaves you freedom later to do better work, perhaps change angles and views between other things. But we do storyboards for titles, interactive menus, and very basic info that really need visuals. Sometimes the storyboard may be just a floor plan with multiple camera path’s or camera locations. Too bad I did not explain a bit about this since it came up. Thanks!.

 

David

[garethace]

I learned 3DS VIZ by reading books about 3DS MAX, where orchestrating sound effects, special effects, distortions, filters, lighting, cameras etc, is all just like what Stevey Speilberg does. Like Photoshop became the digital darkroom, MAX became the virtual stage set.

[jucaro]

So, having done and submitted the proposal(s), what is the proper way of making a follow-up from the prospect client? Especially when the proposal submitted is one of the many which other renderers/ architectural illustrators have submitted?

 

In my case, I was invited to submit a proposal and a quote, but how am I to know how my proposal fared from the rest without becoming an annoyance to the prospect client?

 

And, would it be professionaly ethical to ask the prospect client who won the contract?

[ingo]

Since you have to give them a timeline when and how long you can do the job, you should ask at a given time, there is nothing wrong with it. You have to plan your time for your work too, so you need to know when its gone.

Otherwise i would ask why you don't get the job, that is more important. But who knows, maybe you got the job anyway.

 

ingo

[jucaro]

Thanks for the insight ingo. Though I still dont know yet whether I got the job or not. As per the email reply I got from my prospect client last week, they told me that they were still evaluating all the proposals and quotes submitted, and that they'll be giving me a call anytime this week. Till then, I guess I'd have to wait till this week is over. Or should I?

[mbr]

Just ask again if you don't hear from them in another week or two.

I know that a project I was competing for the other guys lost because they called every week, for 6 weeks! Granted, they had volunteered to do a 'sample' rendering of a corner of a building and had put some time in (it was a decent sized project, and never got done).

 

If I can, I always ask why I didn't get the job (if I didn't get it). Most of the time they'll give you the amounts of the other bids and sometimes even company names, or at least a quality comparison. 90% of the time it's because the client didn't want to pay for it (the architects client, in most cases). So lots of people think they need this stuff, but when they see 4 bids that are 10 times what they wanted to spend, the forget it.

 

From my experience, the longer they wait, the worse the chances. If it NEEDS to get done, they'll want to start it and know their budget. But that's just my experience.

[dwright]

Well, there are no fixed rules to do that. Instead of calling them randomly and with repetition, (something that could be negative) the best is to ask from day one, those questions such as: when is the award date? Are you going to call us to tell us if we won? When?. These questions are also important to qualify the bid. Many bids, believe it or not are fake. I am getting tougher on that, I will no longer bid on projects that don't have a formal scope of work written by the client.

 

Months ago I bided on a pre-fixed bid. This was a well known architectural firm, and the files submitted to me for the bid, believe it or not, had already the information on who won the bid, the files had the name of the competitor and a text file with instructions for the job written to one of our competitors. The reason why they needed a bid is just to pass the internal rules. I bided anyway, known all this, because I could not believe the mistake and perhaps I thought that the other company turned down the job. No, the bid was "awarded" to that company...

 

I recommend now to ask:

 

- For a written scope of work / brief coming form the company, with a letterhead, preferably signed and in a fax form. I know that this is hard to ask, but believe me, you will save time.

- When is the award date

- Are we going to be informed appropriately if we won?

- Is there any 2nd round for bids?

 

Bids that do not come with some formal brief tend to be a waste of time. These tend to be competitors checking your prices or most commonly, simply curious people that simply want to know how much this work cost because they are architects/engineers that have an informal department that does more or less some viz work but no clue on how much to charge their client.

 

Cheers,

 

David

[Sawyer]

Great insight David, thanks. How often are you in bidding situations?

 

I know at the office we tried to bid a really big project that was too big for the scope of work we do here. My boss went in rally half assed about it he wanted it and knew he wouldn't get & that we couldn't handle the scope. But then he saw another architects animation that really just blew everyone away and he knew that the other architect had won the bid right there and that I could have done something as good. That actually helped me and now I am working on an animation.

[dwright]

many per month, and since I started writing, more fake bid requests

 

[Ernest Burden III]

I hate doing bids, proposals, whatever you want to call them. I also notice that I am much more likely to get hired if I do not write a proposal. I figure that when a client calls me up and justs wants to get a number and availability they are often ready to make a decision without a lot of BS. When someone wants a written bid, then usually its because someone else will be reviewing and that will take days and then you lose any advantage from the personal contact possible when they call you up and you can get them to talk about the project.

 

The other problem with a written bid is that it often requires you to be very specific about not just numbers, but techniques as well. I can do many different techniques, and I am trying to get clients to think 'outside the rendering' since digital makes so many options possible (animation, VR, storyboard-type multiviews) yet if they want you to bid for three renderings, that's all that you can write.

 

Recently I tried writing a proposal as a series of possibilities--alternate ways to approach a group of renderings. It was exactly the kind of project that could benefit from being handled in a non-typical way. I did not get hired (and the architect really wanted me to be the renderer--he's used to me already and likes the way I work) because the final client couldn't understand my proposal. They wanted a price for twelve renderings, I gave them too many options above that. I wonder how the work turned out, who they did hire?

 

Also, I'm lazy. I want to spend all my time creating, and resent the time needed to write bids and invoices, etc. That's why I'm a bad businessman, oh well.

 

David, do you write your own proposals, or do you have 'people' for that?

[dwright]

No I write my own.

 

David

[garethace]

Well i can probably offer you guys a few pointers from the architects point of view at least. So here it goes.

 

Architects are notorious manic depressive people - i know of one architect here in this country, who having fallen out with a client/lost a competition himself, went into his wife's high class hair dressing salon and fired the whole lot working there. Claiming, he would not be able to support them, when his wife was paying their salaries, not him. Architects, especially male ones, but also females love to act the big daddy in all situations.

 

I was offered a raise of a few bucks to stay on in a practice for a year. But after that whole year, i just never even got a 'wiff' of a raise. So the point made, to ask up front, from day one, is about as correct a strategy as you can get with this f****, i mean potential clients. Don't allow them an opportunity to squeerme out from under an agreement. Later down having read the remainder of this post you will understand how they sucessfully manage to avoid you, for long enough, that they cannot even quite remember your name. A bit like Aussie Osbourne not remembering Jack's friends name with the long hair (Can't actually remember it myself now).

 

I have been the guy who phones up/e-mails/calls into computer shops, discusses training, purchase of hardware, digital os maps, visualisation services etc, etc, etc. I have even got things that fell off the back of a lorry for the architects. Until i realised i was being very badly used indeed. I never in my experience paid for/bought any of the many things the architect asked me to price/find out about, including many different visualisation services here in this country. Architects love making plans, like the guy who used to go on holidays, with his bags to the train station, but never got on the train - because most of the fun of a holiday was just getting all prepared, everything else is always a big anti-climax, except you pay for the privelege of having a shitty holiday.

 

Read this thread to understand how they even worm their way out of buying software: http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000239 I have always suggested architects should pay a fee through the architectural institute and receive a copy of VIZ etc, in this way, instead of having to buy it themselves - which is wide open to abuse in my view.

 

On the subject of finding strange text files, showing who already won the bid - that sounds about par for the course too - I remember once doing a competition for a County Hall - where we were actually given a full 3D model of the buildling ready-made, as part of the competition entry. One day i couldn't understand how a simple 2D AutoCAD site plan was 20MB in size. Until one day, i decided to open it in AutoCAD myself - it was a full 3D model of the existing Hall, to which we had to extend. We had just spent a whole month, as 'the visualisation department' of the architectural practice, doing nothing else only re-building this same model from scratch. You can imagine my discust at that - since, there was only one day, left to model the extention. So moral, is, never trust architects who give you digital anything - check it for yourself.

 

The next point i want to address is the biling of clients by architects. Never mind, billing for visualisations - architects regularly out-source photocopying, printing, colour copying, anything they can. Why? Because you send the architect an invoice from 'Snap Printing services' or whoever, for 20 colour prints or something, and they can just hand that invoice straight to the client. If the architect buys 3DS VIZ, a colour photocopier, a larger format copying machine, an A1 plotter, an A3 photo quality ink jet epson printer, the client will stick the poor old architect for all the extras. With clients/quantity surveyors/accountants now squeezing the tits off the architects, they have to learn new tactics, and very sadly outsource far, far, far too much of their work.

 

Finally, whenever a guy comes to this practice, i am not even a qualified architect, but i am put forward as the one to meet the guy who designs curtain walling systems etc, etc. I will allow this guy to show me how he could design curtain walling systems for us, as an architectural practice. The poor guy is just waisting his time talking to me, and i have witnessed some very intelligent, very good sales people 'sell' me the idea of all kinds of new services/products - when i know the guy making the decisions/handling the purse-strings is up stairs drinking coffee and talking about lasts nights football match.

 

If some of the more experienced people here would in fact, like to put heads together and perhaps deal with a subject that has been troubling me now for quite some time. That alot of architectural projects are 'out-living' the technology used to make visualisations/CAD files etc, etc, etc. I know it is nice when an Olympics is coming up and you know a set deadline to realise a Stadium or something. But often, even a dream house might be visualised and only actually realised ten years or more later. This was the focus of a debate here:

 

http://www.archiseek.com/content/showthread.php?s=5a06ca73bf5d3f5834354d88383a648d&postid=15585#post15585

 

Have many of the experienced people here at CG Architect worked on visualisations for project which dragged, on and on and on? I mean, did you feel 'old' by the time, a sod was even turned finally? I know i am perhaps speaking more from a point of view of the architect here, rather than a visualisation artist, but i would be interested in any experiences. If you read down through that Archiseek thread, you will quite quickly understand why architects are so reluctant to commission any visualisation/invest time, money and training expenses into having a visualisation department of their own.

 

Garethace.

 

P.S. I am both the 'tec' poster and the 'garethace' poster on that thread at Archiseek too. I think i am inclined to agree more with the 'tec' guy at the moment though. If you want to buy one single book, and read it, that analyses the issues of architects, clients, computers etc. Make that book 'How Designers Think' by Bryan Lawson. It will be worth your effort i can assure you.

 

[ September 02, 2003, 10:21 AM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[garethace]

I think i should mention one more thing in fact, the above post relates very much more to the European/Irish Architectural profession. Which may indeed be quite different from the American/Candian variants.

 

I guess one thing, the Bryan Lawson book may have dealt with better is regional variations of the architectural practice. In the States, Canada, England perhaps the idea of architectural practices with in-house experts/specialists is quite common. In Spain, even the relationship of Architect and client is very different to what it is in Ireland. I have heard that in America, the projects are designed/built on a completely different timescale to over here.

 

While projects might drag there butts in Europe, and architects tend to be laid back most of the time. Perhaps the visualisation profession, as a specialisation has grown up in America primarily, along with 3DS VIZ etc, for a very different model of how the architect works, designs a building and eventually builds it - since Architects regularly out-source alot more, and have all kinds of experts working for them.

 

In America, there are alot of places where you can do a five year course in Planning. And some Architects possess a degree in Planning and in Architecture. In Europe, it tends to be just the Architect and perhaps a few technicians if you are lucky. Everyone else is considered and opponent, and the respect for the planning profession here in Ireland is very little from the Architectural profession.

 

I have heard alot of English practices in particular employ in-house graphic designers to do web sites, and cg artists to do visualisation moreso nowadays. This move toward better relationships between various specialisations - and closer working relationships - is very slow here in Ireland.

 

[ September 02, 2003, 12:26 PM: Message edited by: garethace ]

[dwright]

Originally posted by garethace:

Perhaps the visualisation profession, as a specialisation has grown up in America primarily, along with 3DS VIZ etc,

No, the pre-viz business is way better, healthier and larger in the UK/Europe region, and secondarily Asia. The US market is slower on pre-viz since developers do not expend as much money on this as I have witnessed in other countries. I also see signs that people are doing it for less and less just to get the job and this is worldwide.

[garethace]

Apologises for the length of this David:

 

This was the opinion offered to me, about the state of the Architectural profession in Ireland, by an American.

 

You have to come to terms with and accept a rather unethical business practice which happens more often than not. Even though you can complete your project in a week, take 6 months or a year to do it and bill your client accordingly... that way your partner will make money, impress his client by pretending the project was very complex and difficult, and you'll get paid over a longer period of time.

 

A European old-guard of the architectural profession in this country, Ireland, is fast dying out as information travels much faster, newer ideas about running professional practices are creeping in slowly. Already, a couple of firms here in Ireland, have employees who witnessed the speed with which buildings/masterplans are fast-traked in the United States. Mainly by bringing in more specialists and outsourcing work.

 

That is embraced already by a couple of very new firms in Ireland. Moreso the ones which did grow from 2/10 people overnight up to about 50/60/70 people. These firms often contain a mixture of economists, graphic designers, interior designers, planners, computer Visualists and so on. I have also worked in practices that are going on three generations established. There the methods are different - the architect professional just drags out the project for a long, long time - and bills the clients at €75 per hour. Those practices do tend to be suspicious of out-sourcing anything, and are always suspicious of digital information, because it can be transported, used to collaborate and so forth. The whole notion of information traveling, being manipulated, shared, re-compiled etc works against their deep seated notion of the professional living in a fortified castle type of organisation, where information is heavily guarded when it 'goes out'.

 

On the other hand, it is no use at all proclaiming the new wave of specialists to outsource to, if those same specialists are crap. And that has mainly been the excuse up until now. In the United States, the Planners, a body of people who specialise in all matters from traffic congestion to housing etc, have all gone and done 5 years time in planning schools all across the United States. So they are equal to architects in terms of sophistication. In Ireland the planning profession, are just public civil servants who have 'graduated' or tripped and fell backwards into this particular role. Hence the enormous suspicion in Ireland between Planning specialists and Architects. I am interested alot in visualisation myself, and providing that 'out-sourcing' service to more forward-thinking firms of architects. But I have to accept that all these new softwares, new techniques to visualise 2D data in 3 dimensions... all of that really does belong in a fast-tracked process of architectural design/planning/visualisation that only exists presently in the United States. And in Ireland, we tend to take 10/20/30/40 years, to do what American professionals manage to combine together and do in 2/3 years.

 

When American companies build technology factories here in Ireland worth millions, the first thing they do, is employ a London-based individual called 'A project manager'. And the Project manager has greater say in what is done, when it is done etc than the project architect. This is to ensure what is said at the top of the post, doesn't actually happen on multi-million pound projects. I have heard the Irish professionals here complaining about this proceedure - "They think just because its Ireland, we are all just donkeys and carts here! We have to prove to them, that Irish Architects aren't just all donkeys and carts!"

 

I mean, this upgrade to a fast-track process in Europe has to be done, without offending the existing professionals - there is a thing called professional etiquette, which states you must respect your fellow professional. Otherwise you can get kicked out of the Institute. So me mouthing off, and saying that the profession are a bunch of technophobes..... will not ultimately do my career one bit of good. On the other hand, things need to change. It is a really tough one to call, and since I will be working for other people for the forseeable future... but this article, describes how efficient the American Visualists, are nowadays, in signing 'out-sourcing' contracts with Architect professionals.