A Design Partner for Architects, Developers and Contractors
This is the Design Partner service: a licensed architect you can put on the front end of a project. Concept design when your team is at capacity and the pursuit will not wait. Design development when a scheme needs to get real before it gets priced. Visualization for a competition, a pitch or a hearing. Feasibility when a developer needs to know whether the site can carry the deal. It exists because there is plenty of capacity for sale in this industry at the back end of a project and almost none at the front, where the decisions are. Firms in any state can use it; the work is delivered digitally, under your seal, on your project.
Based in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Working throughout the United States through a remote-first process; on site in the Arkansas River Valley, Northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma.
What’s included
Concept design and schematic options, drawn to scale and to a real program
Design development: assemblies, sections, coordination, and the decisions that make a scheme buildable
Competition, pitch, entitlement and public-hearing visualization
Design review: a second architect’s eyes on a scheme before it goes out
Site feasibility and property research for developers, with massing and yield
Test fits and commercial interior planning
Detail packages, as-built documentation and permit sets for contractors
Overflow construction document production in Revit, when your team needs the capacity
How it works
For architects, at the front end
Send me a program, a site and a deadline and get options back. Concept studies drawn to scale rather than styled to impress. Design development that resolves assemblies, structure coordination and the awkward parts of the section instead of deferring them. A design review pass before a scheme goes to a client, from somebody who has run their own sets through plan review and knows which decisions will come back. This is the work I actually want, and it is the work most outsourcing arrangements cannot offer, because it requires an architect and not a technician.
For developers
Feasibility comes first: zoning and the entitlement path, buildable area, easements, flood, utilities, access, and a massing study that tells you whether the pro forma survives contact with the ordinance. Then entitlement and hearing visuals drawn honestly to the proposed massing, so what the commission approves is what you build. Test fits when the deal is a commercial interior. If the answer is that the site will not carry the program, you get that answer early, with alternatives.
For contractors and builders
Design help on the projects that arrive as a sketch and a deadline. Permit sets built from your sketches, as-built documentation of existing conditions, and detail packages for the assemblies that keep coming back to bite you. If you are building from a plan you bought and the city wants more, that is a normal week here.
For teaming partners
Design Intelligence is a veteran-owned, US-based studio, available for teaming on pursuits, with commercial interiors and tenant-improvement and lease preconstruction documentation experience behind it. Deadlines and checklists are not a problem here.
The review layer
Every set that leaves here goes through a structured review before delivery: code compliance against the residential and commercial codes that apply, a constructability and cost sanity check, and a specifications pass. That review is my process, run by me. It is not a subscription to somebody else’s software.
Production capacity, when you need it
I also take overflow construction document production. Redline pickup, sheet setup, detail libraries, families, wall assemblies and templates built to your office standards rather than mine, worked natively in Revit. It brings in real money and it is available. It is not the reason to call, and I would rather be in the front half of your project, but if the bottleneck is sheets, I can take sheets.
Where I work
All of this runs remotely and always has. Models move by your file transfer method or a shared cloud workspace, redlines come back marked, and coordination happens on video with the sheet open on both ends. I keep US business hours, which is the practical difference between this and an offshore shop: a question asked at 10 a.m. gets answered at 10 a.m. For firms and pursuits in the Arkansas River Valley, Northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma, I am available in person for kickoffs, charrettes and site documentation.
On licensure
I am licensed in Arkansas. This service is design and production support delivered under your seal, on your project, so your firm’s licensure governs and your state of record is the one that matters. If a scope ever calls for my stamp, licensure and reciprocity get confirmed for that specific project first, with a local architect of record coordinated where required, and we agree on it in writing before anything is drawn.
Frequently asked questions
How do you price this?
Design work by the package: a concept study, a design development phase, a visualization set, a feasibility study. Those have defined deliverables and a defined fee, so you can put the number in your own proposal without guessing. Production work is priced by the sheet or by the package for defined scopes, and hourly for redline pickup and open-ended production. Send me the scope or the drawing list and I will price it.
Whose name goes on the drawings?
Yours. This is support for your project under your seal, and I do not contact your client. If a scope does need my stamp, we agree on that in writing before anything is drawn, and it becomes a different kind of engagement.
Can you support a firm in another state?
Yes, and most of this work is that. Because the drawings go out under your seal on your project, your firm's licensure is what governs, and I am producing to your standards and your jurisdiction's requirements. If a scope ever requires my stamp instead of yours, we confirm licensure and reciprocity for that project before starting and coordinate a local architect of record where the state requires it. On-site presence for kickoffs or existing-conditions documentation is standard in the Arkansas River Valley, Northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma, and available elsewhere by arrangement.
We are a small firm and the thing we actually need is a competition rendered in nine days. Is that you?
Yes. That is one of the most common calls. Geometry from your model or built from your drawings, a real base render, treatment and motion on top, and a set of images and a short video that read correctly at the size the jury will see them. See the visualization page for what runs the pipeline.