9 Reasons Landscape Architects Should Consider the Residential Design & Build Industry

As a landscape architect, your extensive and dynamic educational journey places you at a unique advantage to lead. For example, consider your background in site analysis, botany, environmental psychology–and far more–and how these may empower you to launch a residential design-build company that pushes the industry forward.?

While the process of building a brand, team of professionals, and supportive culture requires an investment of time and resources, you have an opportunity that often goes untapped. So, what are the top reasons to transition from a career as a landscape architect to leading a company? Here are nine reasons why landscape architects can guide successful residential design-build businesses.

1. Professional Empowerment and Autonomy

Let’s begin with, perhaps, the clearest perk of launching a residential design-build company as a landscape architect. Professional autonomy allows you to bring your unique outlook on design and management to the field.

Begin by considering the design experience on a project-by-project basis. As the business owner, you will have the opportunity to guide each design-build project from the initial brainstorming session with the homeowner to the final touches on the property. Choosing your own suppliers, hand-selecting which of your own crews to use, hiring a team of trusted subcontractors, and setting a timeline that suits both you and your client puts the results in your control.

Autonomy also offers access to a broader network of professionals leading the way. By stepping into the role of company owner from the beginning, you are naturally positioned to learn about and influence all the aspects that contribute to the success of a business.

2. Long-Term Client Development

Clients prefer having a single point of contact when developing complex, highly dynamic landscapes. Your unique and thorough understanding of the field enables you to build trust and enthusiasm with homeowners through larger, more meaningful conversations about their projects.?

Leading a project–rather than being a single piece of a larger puzzle–allows you to tailor projects to your creative judgment. Having creative control means the final outcome directly reflects you and the client’s vision, encouraging repeat business and recommendations within their community.?

3. Fostering a Culture of Support

As the owner of a design-build company, you have the opportunity to do more than tend to your clients’ needs. The team involved in completing a successful installation is extensive–from the contractors to the material supply companies. This allows you to create a culture of collaboration, open communication, and clarity.?

Leading with integrity creates a better experience for everyone involved and inspires the rest of the industry to adopt similar collaborative efforts. The most successful teams I’ve encountered are ones that help each other grow with a culture of mentorship and support. When each professional in the group succeeds, the project succeeds.

4. Developing a Network of Professionals

Building your dream network of professionals and clients is a major perk. As a leader, you can use your meticulous eye for quality to bring talented experts into the same room to serve each unique homeowner. Project managers, subcontractors, sales professionals, and dependable suppliers all play a role in creating a company with momentum.?

Additionally, this network will expand with each project. Owning a design-build firm is an opportunity to center yourself in the field as a trusted leader. In far less time than working individually as a landscape designer, you become synonymous with high-quality results and community building.

5. Brand Differentiation

Even if you have a similar background and approach as your fellow landscape architects, your brand will always stand out in the industry. Building this brand takes time and often requires the guidance of a trained marketing team, but leading the design-build process yourself brings a unique quality that attracts customers. Your portfolio, expansive network, and collaborative style set you apart from other professionals in your area.

The perks of a strong brand are numerous. Consider, for example, the client seeking a poolscape that complements the design of their home’s architecture. Your demonstrated projects, SEO strategy, and word of mouth from local homeowners cut out the guesswork. Hiring you to recreate a similar yet customized poolscape reduces their decision fatigue.

6. Hands-On Learning Opportunities

In any industry, but particularly in the landscaping field, it’s easy to get pigeonholed into a specific skill and specialty. While finding your niche is undoubtedly beneficial, expanding your knowledge beyond the design stage is invaluable to your long-term goals.?

Developing a design-build company from the ground up provides hands-on experience with sales, budgets, marketing, brand identity, employee management, operations, and client relations. This litany of skills will allow you to pivot into other areas in the field as your career progresses.

7. Financial and Practical Advantages

Starting your own design-build business certainly requires an upfront investment but can offer more substantial financial benefits over time than working as a contractor. For example, when signing a Design-Build Contract, you will earn both the design and construction fees of a project. The construction income covers the material, labor and equipment costs but also covers the overhead and profit of the company. This gives one the leeway to market, create a productive office environment, hire office staff, and pay yourself well. You’ll also have a larger hand in limiting your risk and building your company at a sustainable speed for everyone involved. The bird’s-eye view of your company’s financial growth can be a huge practical advantage.

On a larger scale, the industry always needs innovators. By leading a company with your unique expertise, you can break financially damaging trends that neither benefit the client nor the contractor. You have the opportunity to prioritize quality over profit and thoughtful, environmentally friendly design over speed.?

8. Keeping Up With Industry Trends

When you develop the big-picture vision of a design-build industry, you have the chance to continuously understand and set new industry trends. Remaining a landscape architect will also allow this, but you may have less decision-making power to break companies out of old habits.?

For example, leading projects that incorporate the needs of the local region, environment, and community requires you to have the time and access to these industry discussions. Since the industry will see you as a new leader in the field, you may have access to more channels for developing these modern design tactics. Building codes and eco-conscious design approaches change each day, and having the power to steer these throughout your projects is one of the keys to staying relevant.

9. Community Impact

Combining all these benefits makes it easier to see your direct impact on the community. Landscape architects already have the large-scale training to build a holistic and thoughtful design, so bringing this knowledge into a leadership role is an intuitive next step.?

Your education also provides the framework to build on what makes a client relationship and a design a triumph. Continue to grow your knowledge of local architecture, the development of local building codes, and ways to encourage environmental stewardship. As a dynamically trained and motivated professional, you are uniquely positioned to create a design-build company that leads the way.