Master plans
The importance of
Most everyone knows the axiom “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Yet in today’s rapid-change society, many program or project plans fail because they did not go far enough. Such plans should fall under their own plan – a MASTER PLAN – to maximize success today and tomorrow.
Master plans outline the desired future for your organization and chart general steps for getting there. Their clarity and direction reassure patrons and observers of your seriousness and legitimacy, while their adaptability helps create respect, unity, and support among your clientele, constituents, and community.
An effective master plan starts with a grand vision statement capturing the spirit and purpose of your business or organization. It then structures that vision through strategic, obtainable goals, outlines the funds and resources required to perform these directives, sets budget targets, and lays out a flexible roadmap and timetable for achieving them. Finally, the master plan helps organizations stay ahead of market changes by setting reassessment and accountability standards. This is critical, for temporary changes in funding, materials, and other critical resources may require nimble adjustments to take advantage of opportunities or steer clear of obstructions.
What benefits come from this organizational soul-searching and analysis? A master plan:
-
Provides a platform to hear and analyze the views of all constituents. It shows everyone not only the mission and purpose of an organization but how it intends to reach its goals.
-
Places everyone on the same path to success. It creates a unifying platform everyone may gather around and participate in. The plan builds credibility and support as participants see accumulated results.
-
Improves budget planning, streamlines growth expectations, and promises uniform cash outlays. It establishes clear fundraising plans and guidance, and helps protect your organization’s purpose.
How Reed Architecture helps you achieve this
At our core, we are excellent listeners. We start each master plan, fundraising campaign, construction, or renovation project by setting aside our egos and personal agendas to make sure we hear your exact needs, wants, goals, and dreams. We use focus groups to achieve this. These groups comprise your chosen stakeholders – administrators, workers, clients, customers, parishioners, students, parents, donors… whoever you wish to involve. We like to host these meetings off-site, to create a comfortable atmosphere where people may freely voice their interests and concerns.
First up is our vision setting session. This helps us pull our concepts and ideas together, establish our benchmark goals, and build a team spirit. We also may take stakeholders on trips to view firsthand facilities other organizations renovated or built to achieve goals like yours. We then form user groups to understand what they need to operate and function within their spaces.
As we plan and host these meetings, we explore your operations and evaluate your existing facilities. This process starts with studies of your history, past and current master plans, facility traffic and usage demands, industry standards, and area property regulations. If you choose, we may complete our own assessment of your existing structures and infrastructure. We compare these to your existing vision and mission statements, program needs, and growth expectations.
When we’ve reached a good understanding of your situation, we take our analysis back to your key stakeholders for review and vision testing. This important focus group meeting allows us to finalize the program data and write the project program, identifying the budget, size, function, amenities, and other plan elements. This also leads to the conceptual designs that put the vision in focus.
We end this process with a master plan that exceeds your initial goals. This proven roadmap to success capitalizes on all the information gathered to explore ideas and concepts that fit your parameters, streamlined and brought into focus by your feedback and input throughout this process. We do not stop until we reach a solution that meets your goals and budget.
Having raised your expectations, we then do everything possible to exceed them as dreams grow into plans and drawings take form in brick and mortar. Depending on which services you choose, we may help you:
-
Monitor the health and progress of your master plan, watching for market changes that promise to benefit or hinder your efforts.
-
Nurture or prune individual branches of that master plan, helping you decide when to advance specific projects from concept to development and construction.
-
Understand and maximize budgets by keeping you informed of cutting-edge materials, changing systems, different construction processes, and the impact of area laws.
-
Manage contractors, locations, regulators, resources, funding campaigns, and timetables.
-
Win public support by making images, slide shows, pamphlets, models, even ourselves available to lend a hand in fundraising events, informational gatherings, promotional efforts, or other needs. Reed Architecture has enjoyed particular success helping clients meet their fundraising needs. Our clients have raised more than $700 million to complete their projects.
We may provide all these things and more, depending on the project budget plan you choose and the services you desire.