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Commercial interior design business consultant Rodney McNabb has led an A&E firm since 2005. Next Phase A&E helps owner-led commercial interior design firms with a core team of 3 to 20 full-time equivalents fix how they price, bill and staff their work.
Commercial interiors work leaks margin in its own ways:
Fees set by square foot with no check against actual hours
FF&E selection rounds with no limit in the contract
Client changes after design approval, done before anyone signs a change order
Billing a month or more behind the work
Every fee, schedule and staffing call routed through the owner
Request a meeting. In one free call, we'll show you which of these costs your firm the most.
Fee method: A written way to price each project type, checked against actual hours on your last ten projects.
Scope and change control: Contract limits on selection rounds and revisions, plus a change approval step your project managers run without you.
Billing and capacity: Billing, WIP and staff hours in one monthly view, so you see which projects pay and who has room for the next one.
Owner independence: Written approval rules for fees, schedules and staffing, so your project managers decide without waiting for you.
Pull the fee and the actual hours for your last five fit-outs. Divide fee by hours to get your effective rate on each one.
Most owners find one project type pays well and another loses money every time. The losing type tends to share a cause, such as open-ended FF&E rounds or late client changes. Fix the contract terms for the losing type first.
Pre-Design is a free call of up to 45 minutes. Then you get a fixed-fee Schematic Design proposal.
The Schematic Design diagnostic reviews your fees, scope terms, billing and staffing, then gives you options for the first system to build. Design Development builds the one you pick with your data. Construction Documents writes the procedure, trains the process owner and verifies the handoff.
See every phase on our A&E consulting services page. Not ready to talk? Take the 7-Minute Firm Health Check.
Planning to sell the firm or hand it to partners? See A&E firm succession planning to get your books and procedures ready before the valuation.
Work alongside architects? See our architecture firm business consultant page, or see all the firms we serve on business consulting for architecture and engineering firms.
What does an interior design business consultant do?
An interior design business consultant reviews how a design firm prices, scopes, bills and staffs its projects, then builds the methods and procedures to improve margin and cash flow. Next Phase A&E does this in fixed-fee phases.
Do you work with residential interior designers?
No. We work with owner-led commercial interior design firms only, such as workplace, healthcare, hospitality and retail practices.
How should a commercial interior design firm price its fees?
Pick one method per project type (fixed fee, hourly with a cap, or a rate per square foot) and test each fee against the actual hours on similar past projects. A fee with no hours check is a guess.
How do we stop unpaid FF&E revisions?
Write a set number of selection rounds into the contract, track each round, and send a change order before the next round starts.
Do you provide interior design services?
No. Next Phase A&E provides business advisory only. We do not practice interior design, and we offer no accounting, legal or tax advice.