9 Questions you should answer BEFORE you start Designing a building

Plus 6 more questions worth asking.

ESP INSIGHT 00

Why Insight 00?

Because these questions belong before everything else.

Before the floor plan.

Before the elevations.

Before the renderings.

Before the first line is drawn.

Most projects begin with an idea of what the building should be.

There may already be a property. A rough square footage. A list of spaces. A construction budget. Maybe even a sketch of what someone thinks the building should look like.

That's normal.

But before we start trying to design the answer, there are questions worth asking about the problem.

What are we trying to accomplish?

Who are we trying to serve?

What are we assuming?

What are we investing?

And how will we know whether the decisions we're making are actually moving the project in the right direction?

The answers won't necessarily tell us what to design.

They should help us understand why we're designing it.

That's why this is ESP Insight 00.

Strategy comes before design.

The Questions Come Before the Drawings

Answering these questions won't design the building.

That's not their purpose.

Before we start deciding what a building should look like, how large it should be, where the walls should go, or what systems it needs, we should understand what we're actually trying to accomplish.

The questions that follow are intended to help uncover the purpose, people, operation, environment, investment, assumptions, and decisions that the design will eventually need to respond to.

You may already have an idea of what the building should become.

That's okay.

Before we start designing the answer, we should make sure we understand the question.

9 Questions Before Design Begins

These aren't questions with universal answers.

Your answers will depend on your project, your organization, your property, your people, your investment, and what you're ultimately trying to accomplish.

The purpose isn't to tell you what those answers should be.

The purpose is to make sure we're asking the questions while there is still time for the answers to influence the project.

QUESTION 01

What are we actually trying to accomplish?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Defines the purpose of the project—the reason the project exists and the standard future decisions should be measured against.

What problem are we trying to solve?

What opportunity are we pursuing?

What needs to become better than it is today?

Before deciding what spaces, rooms, systems, or features belong in a building, we need to understand why the project exists in the first place.

Purpose gives every decision that follows something to measure itself against.

QUESTION 02

What does success actually look like?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Establishes what a successful outcome actually means.

More space doesn't necessarily mean success.

Neither does completing the project on time or staying within the construction budget.

Success might mean increasing capacity. Improving operations. Reducing staff travel. Creating a better experience for residents, patients, employees, or customers. Supporting future growth. Increasing the value of a property.

Every project may define success differently.

If we don't know what success looks like, it becomes difficult to determine whether our decisions are moving us toward it.

QUESTION 03

Who does this building actually need to serve?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Identifies the people whose experience matters.

That may include owners, employees, residents, patients, customers, visitors, maintenance staff, delivery drivers, or others who interact with the building every day.

Different people may need very different things from the same building.

Understanding those people before design begins helps us recognize where their needs align—and where they may compete.

Buildings exist to serve people. We need to understand who those people are.

QUESTION 04

What does the operation need the building to do?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Reveals how the building needs to support the mission and daily operation, rather than simply provide enough space to contain it.

How do people move through the building?

Where do employees spend their time?

How are deliveries handled?

Where does equipment need to go?

What happens during the busiest part of the day?

What slows the operation down today?

A floor plan can contain everything on the program and still make the organization harder to operate.

The building shouldn't simply contain the operation. It should support it.

QUESTION 05

Are we starting with the right property or building?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Tests whether the property and existing conditions support the purpose of the project.

Location and square footage are only part of that decision.

Zoning, parking, access, utilities, infrastructure, existing building conditions, development rights, expansion opportunities, building systems, and other constraints may significantly affect what can reasonably be accomplished.

Sometimes the property supports the idea.

Sometimes the property forces the idea to change.

And sometimes the right decision is another property entirely.

The building and property should support the project—not become obstacles the project spends its entire budget trying to overcome.

QUESTION 06

What are we assuming to be true that we haven't actually proven?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Exposes risk hiding inside assumptions before those assumptions become expensive design or construction decisions.

We assume the zoning will work.

We assume there is enough parking.

We assume the existing mechanical system has enough capacity.

We assume the budget is reasonable.

We assume the approval will be easy.

We assume everyone agrees about what the project needs to accomplish.

Some of those assumptions may be correct.

But an assumption repeated often enough doesn't become a fact.

The earlier we identify what we don't actually know, the more opportunity we have to find out.

QUESTION 07

What is the real investment—and what happens if we're wrong?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Moves the conversation beyond construction cost and asks what the project actually requires financially.

The investment may include design and engineering, surveys, testing, approvals, permits, utilities, equipment, furnishings, financing, temporary operations, escalation, contingencies, and other costs beyond the contractor's construction number.

Then comes the second question:

What happens if we're wrong?

What happens if construction costs more than expected?

What if approval takes longer?

What if revenue begins later?

What if an existing condition creates additional work?

A project doesn't need every uncertainty eliminated before design begins.

But the investment should be understood well enough to recognize which uncertainties have the ability to materially change the project.

QUESTION 08

Which decisions need to be made now—and who needs to make them?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Establishes decision priorities and accountability.

Not every decision needs to be made on day one.

But some decisions influence nearly everything that follows.

Who has authority to make those decisions?

Who needs to provide input?

Who controls the investment?

Who understands the operation?

Who ultimately says yes?

An unanswered question doesn't always remain unanswered.

Sometimes it quietly becomes an assumption—and eventually appears on a drawing.

Knowing which decisions matter now, and who is responsible for making them, keeps assumptions from becoming architecture.

QUESTION 09

If we weren't already committed to this idea, would we still choose it?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Forces us to take a fresh look at the project after everything we've learned.

By this point, we may understand the purpose, people, operation, property, assumptions, investment, and decisions considerably better than we did when the project began.

So go back to the original idea.

Knowing what we know now:

Would we still choose it?

Maybe the answer is yes.

Maybe the project is right but the property isn't.

Maybe the property is right but the program needs to change.

Maybe the investment needs to change.

Maybe we've discovered an opportunity that wasn't part of the original idea at all.

The purpose of asking the first eight questions isn't to prove that the original idea was correct.

It's to understand the project well enough to make an informed decision about what should happen next.

6 More Questions Worth Asking

Nine questions can't anticipate every project.

Every building, property, organization, investment, and group of people introduces its own circumstances.

The first nine establish a foundation for thinking about the project before design begins.

But they aren't the end of the conversation.

Here are six more questions worth considering.

QUESTION 10

What are the true must-haves—and what are merely wants?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Establishes priorities before circumstances establish them for us.

Every project has things that are essential, things that create meaningful value, and things that would simply be nice to have.

Understanding the difference gives us something to protect when difficult decisions eventually need to be made.

Priorities are easier to establish before budget, schedule, or physical limitations force the conversation.

QUESTION 11

What can the property legally and practically support?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Separates what we want to do from what the property may actually allow.

Zoning may permit the use while parking creates a limitation.

The building code may allow the occupancy while the existing building creates expensive requirements.

Utilities, site access, infrastructure, setbacks, stormwater, approvals, or existing conditions may introduce additional constraints.

“Allowed” and “practical” aren't always the same thing.

Both matter.

QUESTION 12

What does the schedule really require—and why?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Identifies what is actually driving the project schedule.

Is there a lease expiration?

A financing requirement?

A regulatory deadline?

A seasonal constraint?

A planned opening?

A business or operational need?

Or did someone simply pick a date?

Understanding why the date matters allows the project team to determine which decisions, approvals, purchases, and activities actually control the schedule.

A deadline becomes much more useful when we understand what created it.

QUESTION 13

What happens to this building five, ten, or twenty years from now?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Introduces growth, adaptability, operations, maintenance, and long-term investment into decisions being made today.

Organizations change.

Technology changes.

People change.

Buildings age.

A decision that saves money today may create additional cost later. Another investment made today may provide flexibility that isn't needed immediately but becomes extremely valuable in the future.

We can't predict everything a building will face.

But we can decide whether we're designing only for opening day—or thinking about what comes afterward.

QUESTION 14

What happens if circumstances change?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Tests how dependent the project is on today's assumptions remaining true.

What happens if the organization grows faster than expected?

Or slower?

What if financing changes?

What if staffing changes?

What if the market changes?

What if a future owner or operator needs something different?

The goal isn't to design a building capable of responding to every imaginable future.

That would create its own unnecessary cost and complexity.

The question is whether we understand which changes would have the greatest effect on the decisions we're making today.

QUESTION 15

What haven't we asked yet?

WHAT IT REVEALS

Creates room for the question nobody anticipated.

No checklist can completely understand a project.

Not this one either.

Every project has something unique about its purpose, people, operation, property, investment, or circumstances that a generic list could never anticipate.

And sometimes the question nobody thought to ask at the beginning becomes the most important question in the entire project.

That's why asking good questions isn't a phase we complete. It's part of how good decisions get made.

Before the First Line Is Drawn

You may work through these questions and discover the project you originally imagined is exactly the project you should pursue.

You may discover it needs to change.

You may discover you need more information before deciding.

Or you may discover there's another question you haven't asked yet.

That's the point.

The questions came before the drawings for a reason.

Because every line on paper represents a decision.

And the better we understand those decisions before we begin, the more purposeful the architecture that follows can become.

Strategy First. Design Second. Success Always.

Have a project you're beginning to think about?

Before we start talking about what the building should look like, let's understand what it needs to accomplish.