About | Drafting the Future

Welcome to Drafting the Future, a blog focusing on the “details” of the construction industry.

Imagine a client going to their first meeting with an architect/designer/drafter. The client has the idea that they want to renovate their kitchen. Their plan is to transition their kitchen from a closed room to an open layout connecting to the living room, in order to entertain guests while they are prepping their meals. This client has done some preliminary research by gathering pictures of kitchens that they like. Armed with their ideas the client goes to the first design meeting.

At the first design meeting the client is asked; What is your scope of work? What is your time frame? How much is budgeted? What do you like about the pictures that you have provided? The client feels extremely overwhelmed by the situation and all of the decisions that they will have to make. If you are that client, let me start off and state your feelings are completely valid. The aim of Building the Future is to provide insights into the design process to facilitate better communication between the client and the design professional.

After a year of working towards the aforementioned goal, I have had the good fortune to see the reoccurring questions that homeowners and people employing drafting/design/construction services continuously have. After explaining for the umpteenth time what the phases of design are to a client, I began thinking, why is this information not widely available? The design process is an expensive process with an immense amount of money on the line. Designing is a service based commodity. In order to provide a service, communication is of the utmost importance. Every article is written from the reoccurring experiences from the designers point of view. We hope that the insight will facilitate better communication between the designer and the client to reduce waste and frustrations.

About the Authors

My name is Michael, and my business partner Stephanie and I started Drafting the Future in 2016 with the goal of sharing our experiences as we navigate the construction industry. Before founding “Drafting the Future” we started a small drafting company called Oahu Drafters.

The genesis of Oahu Drafters was a project in our professional practice class at University of Hawaii at Manoa. The course assignment was to research the requirements of starting an architecture firm in Hawaii. As we were doing the market research and talking to professionals in the local community we realized that there was demand for temporary drafters by architects to handle the increase in workload. Eureka! We had found our first market niche and we formed Oahu Drafters LLC in order to capitalize on our experience.

Fast forward a few thousand miles of travel, moving, growing, failing, and learning we arrive at Building the Future.

Who “Drafting the Future” is for?

“Drafting the Future” began as a resource for non-construction industry people to understand the process of the professionals. Multiple times we have been asked to turn a sketch of a client into “the computer” in which the client then believes that they are able to then take and build a building. The process of producing drawings from a simple sketch to a finished product takes a multitude of steps. From the professionals point of view, they see hours of research into determining the relevant building codes, how those codes affect the clients intent, determining structural systems…etc. Said in other words the floor plan from the client helps with adjacency in schematic design, the design process of gathering all of the information in order to create the list to do and then executing those things is the value of the design process. We started “Drafting the Future” in order to explain the process of design to illustrate its value.

We continue to do “Building the Future” to communicate our practice in the construction industry. The benefit of the architecture education is in the constant critiquing of the information that the student gathers and then presents. We have spend thousands of hours of researching, analyzing, talking with clients, architects, engineers, and using drafting software in order to bring the best information to the users.

Contact Us For

⌂ Questions that you would like to have answers using our contact form, and we will answer your question directly.

⌂ Advertising opportunities. Related to the construction industry preferred.

If you are looking for drafting service please contact us at info at oahudrafters dot com.

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