Andrew Garulay, RLA

It is not your design skills that will make you or break you. It is your ability to position yourself to be found at the right time by the people who can use you and value what you do. Right now, your clients are most likely finding you through the design/build company rather than finding the design/build company through you. You can not survive o…[Read more]

There are a lot of people with BLAs, BSLAs, amd MLAs trying to get internships and can not. Some of them are willing to work for free and can’t find any opportunities. I’ll leave it up to your judgement if you think you have a better shot at an internship with an LA than they do or not.

Express your approval or disapproval the old fashioned way – by choosing to be a member or not.

I know a RLS who got a Master’s in LA from Harvard GSD, but that really does not matter.
 
Land Surveyors are required to know more than just measuring land and drawing plans. The biggest void that an RLA would need to fill is in the legal end of things especially to do with land ownership and title.
 
I’ve worked twelve years in small c…[Read more]

Prrof reading and having someone else proof read your correspondence is not a bad idea either. In this day of texting, people get into writing habits that are less than what would be the best representation of one’s self.
 
I agree that it is not a good idea to apply a standard operating proceedure to every LA firm. There are very old school p…[Read more]

I have not applied for a job lately, but I send proposals and invoices by email and US Mail. I start the email out with “Please find the attached pdf file of … .. A hardcopy is also being sent by mail”. This allows me to do both without having it appear that I’m being pushy or impatient. It should be no different with a job ap.
 
Email is f…[Read more]

I spoke with a mason about flue size two days ago. I did not ask him anything about chimney height or any specifics, but he told me that the flue size is calculated based upon the opening of the fireplace and chimney height. It does not answer your question, but it does tell you that there is an actual formula and you have an additional variable…[Read more]

Will an MLA have sharper skills? … if the latest technology and use of it is the difference  in skill set, the BLA will beat the MLA. Will many LA offices keep up on the latest technology? Is a more mature person who has gone through desparation be a more motivated member of the team than someone emerging from the cacoon of school?
 
I don’t k…[Read more]

Yesterday, it was the landscape contractor and or site project manager who did not communicate that the Special Permit that allowed the addition to the Doctor’s office required that the existing trees were to stay and that the hedge row in front of them was to supplement the screening for the residences that border the property.
 
The landscaper…[Read more]

My formula is not to give a price to install, but to estimate the price of someone else to provide and install based on collecting bids and dividing the planting portion of the bid by the total cost of the plants from a particular wholesale catalog. I’ve done this for ten years and it is very consistent…. in my area it is 3.5X the wholesale…[Read more]

Success depends on three things.
 
First that land is being developed or re-developed.That is where the biggest problem is right now. That is likely to change, we just don’t know when.
 
The second is having a skill set that matches the needs of the people doing the development or re-development.
 
The third thing, and this is also a very di…[Read more]

[Like]

He gave some people something they liked. That is a good thing. I don’t like it, but it is a great thing that he brought joy to those that did. It does not mean that every painter should paint this way.
 
It is the same with real landscapes. Enjoy the parts of the diversity that you like and get over the things that you don’t like, but be glad…[Read more]

It depends on where you are buying them – direct from production nurseries, from re-wholesalers, or from retailers. It also depends on where your market is, how much reputation you have to build your value.
 
In my market, the well established upper level contractors get about 3.5 x the direct price of plants including installation, soil…[Read more]

It is not like Coke and Pepsi that have to market to each individual consumer. The people developing on a scale which requires the likes of an EDAW know who is who in the design business whether or not they change their names every year.
 
The “one stop shopping” is the issue that we need to observe, understand, and possibly react to. Efficiency…[Read more]

April,
 
It is a huge advantage not to need work to keep you fed. A big trap door for a lot of people when they do this is that at some point they start taking on lower level work in order to bring in some money, next comes pricing to desperately make a sale, and before you know it you have become a discount landsaper getting more references for m…[Read more]

It sounds like a good plan. The problem is going to find someone with those skills who wants to partner up with you. What do they get out of the deal? You believe that it takes them to the next level, but do they believe it does that?
 
What are their alternatives to partnering up? They can hire a designer for each individual job that requires…[Read more]

I think that the biggest negative about going straight into entreprenuership is that it isolates you. There is a reason that most states require an internship (besides exploiting recent grads). The alternative is like homeschooling yourself and expecting that the teacher is a legitimate mentor for the student while they are one in the same pe…[Read more]

There is a lot of cross over between architects, civil engineers, and landscape architects.
 
We like to box architects as all being the same – they design buildings and are clueless once they get outside of the foundation. We like to believe that engineers are all techno-bland gear heads that make the water drain in the most mundane way…[Read more]

The fact is that the job market for MLAs, as well as others, sucks. It does not mean that the profession is dead. Obviously, the profession is not expanding because development is stagnant. That means that new opportunities for employment is not very widespread.
 
The idea that an MLA is a big advantage seems like wishful thinking to me. There are…[Read more]