What Only the Client Can Decide

Clients frequently ask what is expected of them, and the honest answer is: less than they fear, but at specific moments and with real consequences for delay.

A consultant can advise on anything. There are a small number of decisions a consultant cannot take, and a project stalls when they are left open.

1. What the building is for, in detail

Not "an office" but how many people, working how, growing how fast, and what has to be true on day one versus year five.

Every consultant will design against the brief given. Only the client knows the business behind it. A brief that says "flexible" is not a brief, it is a deferral, and it will be resolved on site by someone with less information.

Needed: before concept design.

2. The budget, honestly

Including the parts outside construction: fees, statutory costs, GST, contingency, finance.

Clients sometimes withhold the real budget, believing that stating it means spending it. The effect is that the team designs to the wrong number and the redesign is paid for anyway.

Needed: before concept design.

3. What matters most when something has to give

Every project reaches a point where cost, quality and programme cannot all be held. Which one gives is a business decision.

Deciding it in advance , in principle, before the pressure arrives , is one of the most useful things a client can do, because in the moment the decision is taken under time pressure by whoever is loudest.

Needed: before tender.

4. Who speaks for the client

One name. With authority to decide.

Projects with committee decision-making move at the speed of the committee's calendar. Projects where the site is told different things by different people on the client side produce exactly the outcome you would expect.

Needed: at appointment.

5. The specification level, area by area

Not "good quality". Which areas get the money.

This is genuinely a client decision because it is about what they value. An architect can advise where a rupee shows most, but the priority is not the architect's to set.

Needed: before tender.

6. Whether to accept a variation

Every variation has a cost and a time consequence, and they are only visible if someone is tracking them cumulatively.

The client decision is not whether each one is reasonable. Individually they always are. It is whether the running total is still acceptable.

Needed: continuously.

7. When to say no to a change of their own

The most expensive changes on most projects are client changes, made late, each individually justified.

There is a point after which a change costs several times what it would have cost earlier, and someone should say so out loud. A good consultant will. The decision remains the client's.

Needed: continuously, and hardest after the design freeze.

8. Whether the building is ready to accept

Handover pressure is always toward acceptance. The consultant can list what is outstanding. Only the client can decide whether to sign, and signing is the moment their position weakens.

Needed: at handover, and not a day earlier than the building deserves.

What this means in practice

A client who does these eight things well will get a substantially better building than a client who is more involved but less decisive. Involvement is not the variable. Decisiveness at the right moments is.

The corollary is a fair thing to expect from your consultants: they should tell you when a decision is due, what it costs to delay it, and what they recommend. A team that presents a decision without a recommendation has handed you a problem rather than done its job.