Our of my clients has a strange habit of sending me google earth images of plots of land, for me to carry out design feasibility studies. He sends them at odd hours; late at night, on weekends - without an accompanying text message or brief. On the following day, I 'll contact him and he tells me the background and I set about working out a schematic design - some of these are land he intends to buy, others are owned by him already while others still are joint-venture opportunities for development with the land owners.
Some of my friends think that he is taking advantage of us, I see this differently.
I see this as an opportunity to have an on-going conversation (and relationship) with my clients, and also a way to hone our design skills, to be quicker to see a solution, and a way to train the young ones in the office (so that we have an on-going conversation about design in the office). And get paid for it. True, some of these projects remain as 'lines on paper' - they do not proceed for a number of reasons; commercial viability, JV partners cannot conclude the deal, planning restrictions, and so forth. These go to our website as a part of our portfolio.
And I enjoy doing these feasibility studies.
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