A senior designer is marked absent on Tuesday because she did not punch in at the studio. She spent the morning at a client's flat checking the false ceiling layout and the afternoon at a vendor's showroom choosing laminates. The punch record was accurate. It also told the principal nothing about her day.
Design practices cannot copy a factory's shift chart. People move between desk, client and site, and the pressure arrives in bursts around submissions. This guide sets out rules that fit that pattern. Wider context is on the architects and interior design firms hub.
Start from the weekly location plan
The first rule is simple: everyone says on Friday where they will be next week. Studio, client, site, vendor or home. It takes five minutes per person and lets the studio head see who is reachable and when critique can be held.
Name and studio team: ____.
Project and stage for each day (concept, working drawings, site): ____.
Mon: studio / client / site / vendor / home.
Tue: studio / client / site / vendor / home.
Wed: studio / client / site / vendor / home.
Thu: studio / client / site / vendor / home.
Fri: studio / client / site / vendor / home.
Planned late sitting and the reason (tender, handover, client review): ____.
Leave or half-days planned: ____.
Approved by the studio head on Monday morning.A shared calendar can carry the same information. What matters is that the plan exists before the week starts, and that changes are posted on the group the same day.
Core hours for critique and coordination
A studio does not need every person at a desk all day. It needs overlap. Pick a block, say eleven to four on three named days, when designers are expected in the studio for pin-up reviews and consultant calls. Outside that block, site trips, vendor visits and home work are planned around it.
Write the block into the offer letter and the induction pack. Juniors learn drawing standards by sitting beside seniors, so their core days should be fixed, not optional.
Site visits: log, travel and a half-day rule
- Log each visit: project, plot or flat address, time in, time out, who met the person and what was decided.
- Count travel: a trip across a city to a plot is working time, so agree whether the day starts at the studio or at the site.
- Half-day rule: a site visit that ends after lunch means the person need not return to the studio, so long as the log is sent.
- Share trips fairly: one person who always drives to far plots will burn out, and the log shows the pattern.
- Safety on site: helmets, footwear and a call to the supervisor on arrival, written into the checklist.
The log doubles as a record for fee billing. Site supervision hours show up in the project timesheet, which helps when a client disputes extra visits.
On a plot visit the designer checks the plinth level, the setback line, lintel heights and the parapet before the slab shuttering goes up. A trip like that is a morning of concentrated work, so do not schedule a critique at noon on the same day.
Late sitting before submissions and handovers
Tender week, municipal submission day and the last week before a client moves in produce long evenings. The problem is not that they happen. It is that they happen without a plan and without a day back.
- 1
Name the date early
The project architect posts the submission date when the job starts, not three days before.
- 2
Plan the last week
Who stays, until what time, who orders food, who has the following morning off.
- 3
Record the extra hours
In the timesheet against the project, with the reason.
- 4
Give the day back
A half or full day within a fortnight, agreed in advance, not offered as a favour.
- 5
Review the pattern
If the same team stays late every month, the problem is allocation or fee, not effort.
Interns, freelancers and the visualiser's render hours
Interns on a three-month placement follow studio hours and sit with a mentor. Freelance draughtspeople agree a deliverable and a deadline, not a clock. A render artist waiting on a long Lumion or V-Ray job may leave the machine running overnight and work from home next morning. Write these exceptions down once, so nobody argues each time.
Leave that protects live projects
Leave requests should name a cover partner for each live project, and the approver should see the submission calendar before saying yes. A designer who wants a wedding week in the middle of a tender is not refused by default, but the question is asked in time.
- Publish submission, handover and client review dates on a shared leave calendar.
- Ask for leave in the second week of a project, not the last.
- Name a cover partner who has seen the drawings.
- Agree what is handed over before the leave begins: file locations, pending queries, vendor contacts.
Where to begin
Begin with the Friday location plan for one month. Add the site log in month two, and the late-sitting plan in month three. Compare the interior team's habits with interior design firms attendance and shift processes and the field-heavy variant for landscape designers. Our attendance, shift and leave process service builds the framework.
