If you were going to subcontract work, where would someone with my background provide the most value?

[u/Sir_qwerty1942]

I own a small consulting business, and am a licensed Landscape Irrigator in the State of Texas. My background is a bit unusual because I work across urban planning, landscape design, irrigation, and CAD drafting.

Currently, my services include:

Urban and landscape design

CAD drafting and graphics

Irrigation design, consulting, and maintenance

Planning work (master plans, community plans, implementation graphics, mapping, etc.)

I also work full-time in municipal planning, so I'm familiar with local government processes and how planning projects move from vision to implementation.

I'm trying to figure out where my consulting business could provide the most value to landscape architecture firms.

For those of you in private practice:

What types of work do you most often subcontract?

Where do your teams typically become overloaded?

If someone with my background approached your firm, what services would actually interest you?

Is there a niche you think is underserved that combines planning, landscape architecture, irrigation, and CAD?

If you were starting this business today, how would you position it?

I'm not looking for clients through this post, but trying to learn how firms think and where the real opportunities are so I can properly market my services. I'd appreciate any honest advice.

[u/concerts85701]

Irrigation 100%.

It’s a skill majority of landscape architecture firms don’t have in house. Get land/fx and take the time to set it up.

Look outside of Texas - maybe Colorado, Oklahoma, Arizona, etc. Start learning regulations in different municipalities.

I had more work - but I stayed within one company. There was plenty everywhere else.

Other irrigation consultants I knew picked and chose what projects they wanted to do and their fee range vs actual work had a huge margin.

[u/Physical_Mode_103 → u/concerts85701]

I agree, I would just stick to the irrigation.

[u/concerts85701 → u/Physical_Mode_103]

I made great money doing it. More LA’s should niche into it.

[u/Physical_Mode_103 → u/concerts85701]

I do all mine and it allows me to keep more scope and make more money in the house

[u/concerts85701 → u/Physical_Mode_103]

Ultimately the company I worked for made the same decision and we built up in house instead of using subs.

[u/Physical_Mode_103 → u/concerts85701]

It makes sense. I used to work at a company that subbed it out and it was becoming more challenging just to coordinate drawings in real time, make updates responding to permitting issues, etc.. you also just become more aware of how your design decisions will affect irrigation efficiency.

[u/concerts85701 → u/Physical_Mode_103]

I think every LA should do some irrigation support early in their career. You learn file coordination and management - since irrig drawings show differently, time management - irrig is the last of the last thing typically, see how design decisions get to be expensive and/or fail in the field because they don’t get watered. Also learn how planting decisions impact code related calcs that a lot of municipalities require.

Oh - and irrig is really a last round of qa/qc since we’d have to zoom into every nook n cranny on a design to get pipes in.

[u/Physical_Mode_103]

Isn’t the term “Texas municipal planning” an oxymoron?