For design-build firms
Your Designers Are Full. Your Pipeline Isn't.
Design-build firms don't need convincing that design sells construction — you built the firm on it. Your problem is arithmetic: each staff designer can carry only so many active projects, and when they're saturated, your sales team is closing work your studio can't start. Design capacity, not lead flow, is the ceiling on your revenue.
+Design is the overflow bench. We take the projects your studio can't absorb this month and deliver them to your standards — moodboards, photoreal renderings, and take-offs priced on your cost data — under your brand, in your document style. Your design director reviews and presents; your client never learns the drafting happened outside your walls.
It's the difference between hiring your fourth designer six months before the workload justifies it, and turning capacity on and off like a utility.
Sound familiar?
Where design bleeds design-build firms dry.
Designer capacity caps your growth
When the studio is full, sales either slows down or overpromises. Both cost you: one starves revenue, the other burns out designers and blows timelines. Overflow capacity lets sales keep selling at full speed year-round.
Hiring ahead of demand is a payroll gamble
A designer is $70-90k loaded, takes months to recruit, and longer to train into your standards. Hire early and you're paying for idle hours; hire late and you've already lost the season. A subscription flexes monthly instead.
Backlog in the studio delays revenue you already sold
Every project queued behind your designers is signed money you can't invoice against. Clearing the design queue pulls construction starts — and draws — forward on jobs that were otherwise just aging.
Rendering production devours senior design hours
Your best designers shouldn't be babysitting render farms and polishing visualizations. Offload production work — modeling, rendering, documentation — and their hours go back to client-facing design, which is what they're actually paid for.
Every package
What design-build firms get in every design.
3D renderings matched to your studio's output
We calibrate to your existing portfolio — camera angles, lighting style, material fidelity — so overflow renderings sit next to in-house work without a visible seam. Your presentation standard stays consistent no matter who produced the frame.
Selections built inside your vendor ecosystem
Moodboards and finish schedules specified from the product lines, showrooms, and trade accounts you already use. Your procurement process doesn't change; the documents arrive ready for your designer's review and your client's signature.
Take-offs in your estimating format
Quantities and pricing structured to your cost codes and templates, priced on your rates. Your estimator validates instead of building from scratch — turning a day of estimating into an hour of review per project.
The money play
How the retainer math works in your world.
You already run a design-fee model — most design-build firms charge $1,000 or more to enter design, credited at construction contract. The constraint was never the model; it's that every retainer you collect books hours in a studio that's already full. Overflow capacity means sales can keep signing retainers in busy season instead of quoting twelve-week design waits that send clients down the street.
The margin math is stark. A retainer client whose package costs you ~$600 through the subscription is design-phase profit even before construction — and construction is where design-build makes its real money. Every package we produce is a construction contract your studio didn't have to trade for one of its own projects.
Firms use us two ways: as pure overflow in peak months, and as a permanent production layer that keeps senior designers on concept and client work. Either way, the growth ceiling moves from your org chart to your lead flow — which is the problem you'd rather have.
Questions
Design-Build Firms ask us.
We have real design standards. Can you actually match them?
That's the onboarding. We study your portfolio, templates, and spec conventions, then produce a calibration project your design director reviews before anything client-facing ships. Most firms are dialed within two or three projects; until then, everything routes through your internal review anyway.
How do we integrate you without confusing our internal team?
Most firms designate one routing point — a design director or ops lead — who assigns overflow projects to us and reviews returns. To the rest of the team we're just another production resource in the workflow. No process re-engineering required.
Can we use you only during peak season?
Yes. The subscription is month-to-month — run it hard through your busy season, drop to a-la-carte in the slow months, come back when the pipeline swells. Capacity that flexes with demand is the entire point.
Who owns the work product?
You do, fully. Files, models, renderings, documents — all deliverables are your firm's property, delivered in editable formats where applicable. We claim no credit, keep no portfolio rights, and never publish your projects.
Our estimates come from our own cost database. Does yours interfere?
No — we price take-offs against your database, exported and loaded during onboarding. If you'd rather keep pricing entirely in-house, we deliver quantities only and your estimator applies costs. Both modes are common.
What about revision cycles? Our clients iterate a lot.
Revisions are included, and design-build iteration loops are normal for us. Your designer consolidates client feedback, sends it once per round, and gets revised deliverables in days. Clean rounds keep the loop fast; we'll keep pace either way.
Other trades we serve
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Put a design department behind your design-build firm business.
Book a 20-minute call — we'll price your first project against your own price list.