Are YOU Thinking What I’M Thinking?

Real networking help has to be where the rubber hits the road. That is not about philosophy or politics so much as it is about finding out about current opportunities. What type of person or organization has shown any of us any kind of opportunity be that in a job or a design contract. One of the problems facing us is that many of us are unsure where actual specific opportunities are.We can all say it is “the green movement”, “alternative energy” , “stimulus money”, or whatever in concept. The simplest and most helpful thing in a network like this is for people to tell what types jobs they are actually getting, for what type of client or employer, and what is the scope of work. I don’t mean generalizations or what you’ve heard, but what are the current first hand experiences. This will give us all a true understanding of what the actual current needs are in order for us to fill those needs.

They are still talking about 20% growth in Landscape Architecture between 2008 and 2018 – I don’t need any more fantasy. I need reality and so do the rest of us.

I’m getting calls from homeowners with residential re-landscapes due to renovations on the house in my side business’ just like always. I’m not getting as many calls from landscape contractors to upsell plans for them as I have had in the past. At the engineering office I’m getting more calls and repeat business from custom builders looking to project manage the landscape on the raze and replacement projects. I see this as a niche that I want to look at more closely. Commercial site plans are very dead here and the landscape plans that went with them. Residential $50k+ seems to be all that is going on in landscape architecture on my sand bar these days.

I think it is all about figuring out the needs of other people and how to best fill those needs. We can’t be thinking so much about how the market is going to meet our needs – those days are over for a while. We can’t do that without the actual data of what exactly is happening out there.

“What jobs have you done lately?” should be the first question out of each of our mouths when talking to colleagues.

I’m not in a true urban area, yet just an hour and a half from Cambridge – urban streetscapes, transportation, and campus design are few and far between and dominated by the Cambridge companies. There just are not many RFPs out there in our area and when there is, we are contacted as subs as the big architecture and LA teams put together a team. We have a regional regulatory commission that keeps out larger projects (mostly because developers want to avoid them and the added burden they add – we must have the highest percentage of 9,990 SF buildings in the world) , so those are all almost nonexistent projects. Development here is almost entirely under 10,000 sf of building because of the commission.
The reason that I direct the question to freelancers is because of my market and because I am a one man department, actually I do not even have a department yet. I’m hoping to get it started.

I am the person who started the “Are you working or not ” discussion thread that has received a rich and healthy response so far. Your discussion thread is where I was hoping to take a lot of the angst, despair and frustration that has been seething in the “Are you working or not” thread and see if we can’t reverse that into some kind of constructive force, or at least more uplifting outlook.

I will certainly take into account some of the commentary in this thread as I come up with those more upbeat and forward looking actions we can take, individually, or togther, as the long trudge out of this economic morass begins.

Yup, so they can raid your house while you are out. Lots of press about this danger lately. And I do like your thinking out loud in type… but agree the suggestion is so large and amorphous it is hard to get one’s mind wrapped around a workable concept. That’s why I think the think out loud thing is so valuable…gets others brainstorming too. keep on speculatin’