In the previous article, "Why Pay for a Design Project When It Already Looks Fine", I showed the difference between a renovation without a plan and a project. The question I hear next is: what exactly am I buying when I order a design project? Pictures? Drawings? Someone to keep an eye on the builders?
Here is the answer, in order. A turnkey project has five parts: the survey, the layouts, the visualisations, the working drawings and the specifications. After them comes site supervision. At the end I will show how this works for a client who does not live in Montenegro all year.
This is a practical article: by the end of it you will know what a project is made of, in what order the stages go and what exactly you are paying for. Why a project is needed at all, I covered in the previous one.
What the project consists of: five parts, in order
A project is a set of documents that the builders work from and the purchases are made from. It starts with a short enquiry and a brief: flat or house, for yourself or to rent out, who lives there, what habits, what budget range. I ask for photos, the developer’s plan if there is one, and an honest list of what does not work now and what you want the project to give you. The first answers already show whether we are a good fit.
Sometimes people order only the 3D images with design ideas - a concept without documentation. That makes sense in one case: the property is being prepared for sale, and the visualisations show its potential better than the bare walls of a new build or photos of an old interior. In every other case you need the full set. A renovation done from pictures without drawings turns out expensive later.
Then come the five parts, in the order they are made.
1. The survey and the record of what is there. A visit to the property: exact dimensions of the rooms, walls, heights and openings, the positions of risers, ventilation, the electrical board and air conditioning runs. Photos and video of everything, including what people usually miss: floor falls, walls out of true, the depth of window reveals. We check and record the load-bearing elements and the services. Without an honest survey every sheet after it drifts: a project drawn from the developer’s plan without checking almost always differs from reality by centimetres, and in a bathroom or a kitchen centimetres decide everything. For a client at a distance (if the project is not in Montenegro), a person you trust does this stage on site from my checklist. The survey becomes an exact base drawing, and we work from it.
2. The layouts. Two or three layout options with furniture, following the brief: where the bedroom goes and where the desk, whether a second bathroom is needed, whether the kitchen moves, what comes down and what stays, where the storage is, how the doors open, whether there is enough room for the passages and enough width for the furniture. We take the approved concept and bring it to perfection. Your answers at this stage set the pace of the whole project. Changes cost least here: after this, every shift pulls the visualisations, drawings and purchases along with it. We approve the layout before the visualisations - otherwise the 3D has to be redrawn, which raises the cost and extends the time the project takes.
3. The visualisations (renders). Realistic images of every area: how it is going to look. Their job is to fix the image before anything is bought: colours, light, textures, furniture, how the materials meet. I treat the visualisations as an agreement: you see the result in advance and say "yes, that is it" or "let us make this wall darker" while it is still a change in a file and not on a wall. We develop the style from your brief and references, or propose our own version if the client trusts us fully with the property and relies on our taste and experience. Changes go in two stages: first one combined list of comments for all the rooms at once, then small refinements, and after that the image is fixed. Endless fine-tuning of shades is charged separately. A fair warning: a visualisation does not reproduce light exactly and does not replace paint samples on the wall. It is a guide, accurate in composition and mood, and the shades are confirmed with samples in daylight and in the evening.
Virtual tours are part of the project at no extra charge - they come with the visualisations. The client and the builders can see any angle, joint and detail in 3D, which answers questions and prevents mistakes. There are examples of tours in the portfolio.
4. The working drawings. These are the sheets the builders work from. Professional sets are usually much the same; the full list is on the Interior Design service page, and here are the main ones:
- demolition and construction plans,
- a dimensioned plan with furniture,
- a ceiling plan,
- a floor plan with the finish layout,
- an electrical plan (sockets, outlets and switches, all positioned),
- a lighting control diagram,
- a plumbing plan with heights,
- an underfloor heating plan,
- wall elevations (a flat drawing of every wall: where the tiles are, where the joints, where the access hatch, at what height the tap),
- details of the difficult places.
Every sheet answers a question the tradesman would otherwise ask you at eight in the morning on site. We check the ergonomics for you, for a left-hander or a right-hander for example, and swap new items for equivalents where needed: sanitary ware, lighting, tiles.
This is the quietest stage for you and the busiest for us: drawing, counting, putting the tables together.
5. The specifications and schedules. Tables of everything that needs to be bought and laid, with quantities, an allowance for cutting, names, product codes where they exist, and a note of what goes where. The specification shows the total before the first purchase: you can see where to simplify without losing the point, and where it is better to keep the level, because daily comfort or letting depends on it.
I advise ordering built-in appliances and sanitary ware as soon as the specification is ready, so that the finishing is not held up.
The five parts depend on each other: without the survey there is no accurate layout, without the drawings you cannot build what the visualisations show, without the specification you cannot buy what is drawn.
What you receive is the full design project: the visualisations and the working documentation. After that, either the build goes ahead with site supervision, or you build it yourself from the finished package.
Site supervision: what it is and why it pays off
Site supervision means checking that the build matches the project. The designer visits the site regularly or stays in contact with it and checks: are the builders reading the drawings correctly, are they building the right thing, are the socket outlets in the right places, has the tile been cut and laid as drawn, is the shade on the wall right, has the lighting been put together as designed.
What supervision is not, I will say plainly. It is not managing the crew and not responsibility for the quality of the building work. The site manager is responsible for how things are laid. The designer is responsible for laying exactly what is in the project. These are different roles, and mixing them does harm to both sides.
Why it pays off. Every day on site there are dozens of small interpretations: different trades read the same sheet differently. Supervision brings everyone back to one decision before installation, before one deviation drags the next one after it. Here is what the checks usually catch:
- the grout was a darker shade than the approved one, and the tile lost all its design potential;
- the fixing for the curtain track was not put in before the ceiling was boarded, and somebody remembered only once the ceiling was closed, although the detail is in the project, in the appendix to the ceiling plan;
- the joint between two floor finishes was not laid under the door leaf, so the threshold strip shows when the door is open, although the layout plan puts it in the right place;
- the skirting profile came from a different system: the right one was out of stock, nobody wanted to hold up the build, and a similar one was used - in the end the corner did not meet in depth.
Each deviation on its own is quick to fix if it is caught before the next stage. Without checks they pile up and take the project apart into unrelated decisions.
The best form of supervision is a combination: online support throughout and site visits between the stages. Online I am in touch: from the crew’s photos and videos I sort out questions sheet by sheet. The visits are at the key points: setting out, electrics and screed before the boarding, plumbing before the tiling, the tiling itself, painting with test samples, installing the lights and the furniture. On the visits we talk through joints, grout and colours, and check the outlets, the layout and the shades.
Does everyone need supervision? If you have a trusted crew that has already built from our drawings, you live nearby and you are ready to check every sheet yourself, you can go without it. In every other case, and especially from a distance, supervision is the cheapest insurance on a build. The project says how it should be done, and supervision makes sure it is.
How it works for a client abroad: no fuss
Most of our clients do not live in Montenegro all year, so the format has grown out of practice. Some projects are not in Montenegro at all, and we run them entirely remotely. We keep in touch in one messenger: a personal chat with me and a separate chat with the contractors. Everything important goes in writing so that agreements are recorded; we call when needed, and the outcome of the call goes back into the chat as text. Images, drawings, and photos and video of the work go there too: the whole history of decisions is kept in one place.
The survey is done without you flying in - access to the property is enough. For properties in other countries a surveyor works from my checklist: survey drawings, heights, service connections; if necessary we join by video call and look at the difficult places together. You do not need to fly in for every stage: it is enough to come for the handover of the key stages or for the final furnishing, and the rest we close remotely.
Purchases for properties in Montenegro are planned around local logistics: many items come from Podgorica or from abroad, some take a long time, so we place orders as soon as the specifications are ready. Photo records replace being there: the crew sends photos and short videos point by point - setting out, cable runs, outlets, the layout before laying, paint samples. It is both a report on the work done and a record of the services before the finishes cover them. Hidden work is not accepted without photos.
Peace of mind at a distance comes not from the number of calls but from a complete package: an approved plan, drawings, tables and a person who checks what is built against them. When the package is complete, distance does not get in the way.
In short: scope, order and supervision
The main point of this article: a turnkey project is five parts in a strict order. The survey gives an accurate base, the layout fixes the way of life, the visualisations fix the look and style of the space, the drawings turn that look into instructions for the crew, and the specifications turn the drawings into purchases with prices. No stage can be skipped without a loss: each part rests on the one before.
Supervision closes the chain: the designer checks what is built against the sheets and tables until the build is handed over. That is why the package reads as a whole: the scope, the order of stages and the check on site.
In the next articles we will go through layouts in detail: zoning, storage, light and sockets, kitchens and bathrooms, and the mistakes in apartments for rent and in a house for yourself.