survey
Not long ago, I received a call from a young electronics entrepreneur who asked me to come and meet with him about the possibility of adding a swimming pool or spa to his multi-million-dollar hilltop property. The home had been built in the early 1960s, he told me, and he'd just completed a major remodeling project. He also indicated that he knew I was expensive, but that he'd already met with a number of other contractors and wanted to
In all of the discussions in print and in seminar rooms about advancing the watershaping trades, it seems to me there's been a missing voice - that of the client. We spend lots of time dissecting, praising, disputing, criticizing and encouraging one another, but somehow we seem to have bypassed the thought that we should pay much closer attention to the people who pay us. To my mind, this is something that should change. As individuals, we really should know what it takes to improve and produce a better buying experience related to watershapes of all types and sizes, commercial and residential. Without this direct feedback from our clients, how on earth can we possibly know whether or not we're truly giving people what they really want? As an industry, unless we figure out some way to pool this feedback and codify it in some meaningful way, we will be
I don't know who first expressed it, but I've always welcomed the notion that "great designers are great thieves." That nugget rings so true because very few among us ever have completely original ideas and, in fact, the best designs are generally derivative of something that came before. To my mind, if some degree of larceny is part of our game as watershape designers, then one of the very best places to find borrowable ideas is a book entitled The Annotated Arch by the historian Carol Strickland (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001) - a wonderful and inspiring 180-page, beautifully illustrated book that offers a
Whether it's done using only a tape measure and a pair of experienced eyeballs or requires the help of satellites orbiting the planet, every construction project is surveyed before the work begins. In fact, surveyors have been plying their trade for thousands of years, and their services have been valued for one simple reason: It's really a good idea to measure the size and shape of the ground before you try to build on it. In today's terms, surveying is defined as the process of taking accurate measurements of the land on the X-, Y- and Z axes (that is, in three dimensions) and then translating that data into a usable (usually printed) format. There are several different surveying methods used to measure, process and communicate this critical information, and choosing the right one is essential to getting any watershaping project off to a sound start. So how do you determine the level of detail required and communicate your need to the surveyor so he or she can give you the appropriate level of information? Let's take a look at the different types of surveys in common use and review what those options mean in terms of creating a truly useful array of
