Ability to Change Goes Down as Cost of Change Goes Up

There is a pattern that shows up in almost every exhibition project:

Ability to change goes down as cost of change goes up.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

At the very beginning of a project, you can change almost anything. Layout. Storyline. Budget. Media ideas. The overall concept.

And those changes are relatively cheap, because nothing has been built.

But as the project moves from Concept Design to Design Development and then Final Design, things solidify. Decisions turn into drawings, drawings become shop drawings, shop drawings become things, things get installed.

Every one of those steps makes change harder and more expensive.

Changing a storyline during interpretive planning is easy.
Changing a gallery layout during Concept Design is manageable.
Changing a case after fabrication has started is expensive.
Changing a graphic after it’s installed is very expensive.
Changing something after opening is the most expensive of all.

This pattern is true in almost every building discipline, not just ours. But exhibitions are especially sensitive to late changes because so many custom things are built.

Here’s the thing:

Ability to change goes down as cost of change goes up.

Early decisions feel less important, but they are actually the most powerful and least costly of all.

Warmly,
Jonathan

- - - - - - - - - - - -

MtM Word of the Day:
Shop drawings. Highly detailed technical drawings produced by builders that are used to actually build the work in a way specific to their "shop". Shop drawings are based on, and more detailed than, the final design or construction drawings by a designer or architect.