The 3D Process

The Design Phase

Design For The Future

Because we have completed the foundation with a Dream session, understanding your goals and requirements, we can begin the Design phase, which includes your Five-Year Plan. We think of it as an all-encompassing system design because it includes all the gear you need today, and the plan for gear you'll buy over the next five years. In other words, we put in all the bells and whistles that meet your dreams for the ultimate technical system. During this phase we work on the virtual nuts and bolts of the system. We build everything on paper necessary to install your new system, including items like schematics, acoustic models and line item pricing documentation.

Understanding Design Fundamentals

A system design should be the foundation of any project, but what is a system design? We define it as the intentional organization of materials and information to accomplish the purpose and goals of the project, and we believe starting with a design is the best way to achieve those goals. If you have a bunch of gear it does not necessarily equal a design because it might be a room full of unorganized gear. A system design guarantees widget A will talk to widget B while providing clarity about the purpose of each widget. A clear system design means not only do we understand how your system works but you do as well. As the scale and complexity of any technical system project increases it is paramount that the design increase in quality and excellence.

A Living Design

So you might be thinking do I really need a professional design? Douglas Martin in his book Book Design: A Practical Introduction, said "Questions about whether design is necessary or affordable are quite beside the point: design is inevitable. The alternative to good design is bad design, not no design at all." In other words you have two choices, doing it right or doing wrong by omission. We would prefer to see our customers to do it right the first time. Through our experience we learned that a great system design must accomplish two things:

A great system design solves your immediate needs, prioritizes your goals and provides a functioning system from day one. It helps allocate resources and budget necessary to accomplish the project.
A great system design is a planning document. Your system design should not be a static document. It should be a series of living documents that are updated regularly based on changing goals and emerging technologies. Any system design that doesn't allow for flexibility and future planning is simply a schematic of your components.

After creating system designs for hundreds of clients we've discovered that hiring a technical system designer actually saves the client money over the total length of project. Here's how:

A design will tell you exactly how much you need to spend and exactly what functionality you will receive from your system. There is no ambiguity when you can see it on paper before you install the gear.
Spending money for a design before purchasing gear will save you money during deployment because it can prevent unwanted cost overruns. Spending more money to make a piece of gear work is costly and avoidable.
A design means your system will work on day one and not on day sixty-five after all the bugs have been worked out.

Creating Design Excellence

We desire to be different than any other designer in the market. We want to be your advocate for producing a production space that's custom fit for your message. We'll let you focus on training volunteers, programming a Sunday morning services or producing a high-impact messages for the youth while we focus on creating professional, cost-effective, awesome production systems. Our goal is not sell you a design and gear and walk away, but to form a long-term partnership for the advancement of your message. So come with your creativity, innovation, and excellence and let us journey together on the path towards creating a truly remarkable environment in which your message thrives. The following is a list and explanation of everything that goes into our system designs. We hope that this serves as a starting point for future conversations so come with your questions and thoughts. We're ready to listen.

The plan will include:

An overall description of functionality and workflow
Acoustic model of all venues with speakers
3D model of gear in your new spaces
System diagram(s) showing every piece of equipment and how it fits
Calculation of heat loads on all gear for proper engineering of HVAC system
Narrative of mass and weight of technical gear for structural engineer
Calculation of power consumption on all gear for electrical engineer
Address current gear usage in new building
Explanations of why certain pieces of equipment were selected over other competing products
Explanations of why certain pieces of equipment are necessary
Line-item pricing for every piece of equipment in the system at cost-plus
Recommended phases of implementation (i.e., do X immediately, do Y in 6 months, do Z in 18 months, etc.)
Recommended phases of training and team-building
Product specification sheets for all major pieces of equipment
Recommendations for where your current gear fits into the plan
Travel for church technical staff to major audio, video, and lighting trade shows
Demonstrations and Hands-on experience with every major component in your new system
Presentation of Design and Scope of Goals to church leadership
One-redesign after value engineering phase