How We Question a Brief

A brief is a first draft of a conversation. We treat it that way, and it saves a great deal of money.

Clients are often surprised that our first week produces no drawings. We read, we visit, we ask. Then we send back the brief, marked up, with our questions in the margin. It isn't a challenge. It's the quickest way we know to find the project.

Three questions about the project

What is this for? Not "what do you want", which usually has a ready answer. What's it for? A restaurant fit-out might be for filling twenty seats, or for being the room people photograph, or for keeping a team of six in work. Each of those is a different building.

We ask twice. The second answer is usually the true one.

What are you afraid of? This one lands strangely, and it works. People brief against fear without knowing it. The brief says "bright and open" because someone once ran a dark shop and lost money. It says "durable" because a floor once failed. Once the fear is on the table, we can design for it directly, and often more cheaply than the brief implied.

What must stay? Every project has something that can't move: a window, a chimney breast, a customer who always sits at the same table. We find it early and build around it. Ignoring it costs a month later.

Two that change the budget

What could we remove? This is the one that changes budgets. We list everything in the brief and ask, line by line, whether the project would be worse without it. A third of the list usually goes. The client keeps the money, and the room keeps its calm.

Some answers we've heard:

• "The reception desk, honestly. We never use it."

• "The second kitchen sink. It was my predecessor's idea."

• "The statement lighting. We just assumed we needed some."

Who decides? We ask for the name of the person who will say yes. Not the person we'll talk to every day, but the one at the end, who signs. Projects stall when that person hasn't seen the brief, and the surest way to find them is to ask.

What we send back

The marked-up brief goes back within a week. It carries the original text, our questions in a second colour and a short note at the top saying what we think the project is. We ask the client to correct it.

About half the time, the corrected version describes a different project from the one we were given. That's not a failure of the brief. That's the brief working.

We would rather find out in week one. Week twelve is too late.