A client brought me a napkin sketch and said 'make it real'

This was about three years ago at my old firm in Boise. A guy walked in with a coffee-stained napkin that had what looked like a wobbly rectangle drawn in blue pen, and he wanted a full set of construction drawings from it. He pointed at a squiggle and said, 'That's a load-bearing wall, I think.' I had to explain that we needed actual dimensions and a site plan before we could even start. Has anyone else had to gently talk someone down from a sketch that was just a few lines?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly_reed559h ago

Why do we act like napkin sketches are a problem? That client had a real idea and trusted you to build it. Isn't our whole job to take a vision and make it work? I see a wobbly rectangle and hear "I think that's load-bearing" as a starting point for a conversation, not a reason to shut it down. The best projects sometimes come from the simplest beginnings. We should be asking questions to pull the details out of them, not asking for perfect plans they obviously can't make. If we only work from perfect info, what are we even here for?

rowan9699h ago

The problem isn't the sketch, it's the lack of any real specs. A wobbly rectangle is fine, but "I think that's load-bearing" is a great way to get someone hurt. My job is to make things work, sure, but it's also to keep the building from falling down. You need some hard facts before you even start that conversation.

spencer_park263h ago

Yeah exactly, that's the whole point rowan969 is making. "I think that's load-bearing" isn't a conversation starter, it's a giant red flag. Our job is to ask questions, but the first question has to be "okay, let's get a pro in here to check that before we talk about moving it." Starting from zero is fine, starting from dangerous assumptions isn't. You can't pull details out of thin air if the basic safety facts are wrong. The vision part comes after we know the walls won't fall down.

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