The Feasibility Study: where a good project begins.

What clients have rarely resolved at this stage is what is actually possible on their site, how much they are prepared to invest, and whether those two things meet. That gap, between aspiration and what a site and a budget will genuinely allow, is the reason we almost always begin a project with a feasibility study.

A feasibility study starts with a briefing meeting. We ask a great many questions, and just as importantly, we listen. We are trying to understand two briefs at once. The first is what I call the hard brief: the number of rooms, their sizes, the measurable requirements. The second is the soft brief, and it is usually the more telling of the two. How do you actually live? How much do you entertain? What flexibility will you need as a family grows or changes? The soft brief is where a house is genuinely tailored to the people who will use it. Someone who cooks and entertains constantly needs something very different from a single client who rarely cooks but cares deeply about music. On one project, the central requirement was a dedicated listening room, designed around specific dimensions and acoustic performance. That came directly from understanding how the client wanted to live, not from a list of rooms.

Alongside the brief, we build a picture of everything outside the client's control that will shape the project. We evaluate the site and commission or recommend the necessary surveys. We examine the planning context and local policy, which often sets the limits of what can be built long before design begins. We identify the surveys, reports and specialist consultants the project will require, so there are no expensive surprises later. Much of this is information the client cannot reasonably be expected to have, and gathering it early is what allows a properly informed decision rather than a hopeful one. Much of this applies wherever we work, but international projects ask some different questions. The planning context is the clearest of them. In the UK, planning is largely discretionary, with each application judged on its merits. In many other countries it is governed by zoning, where what can be built is set out in advance, which changes how early we can be certain of what a site will allow.

The wider regulatory landscape also varies, and understanding it properly usually means working alongside a local architect as our partner for the duration of the project. That collaboration brings local knowledge and compliance, while we lead the design and set the overall direction of the work. At this stage we will often produce early massing studies and basic plans. The purpose is not to design the house. It is to test the site, to understand its constraints and its opportunities, and to show in broad terms how a project might move forward. It is a way of making the abstract tangible before any commitment is made.

Cost is the part of the conversation clients most want clarity on, and the part most often misunderstood. A simple cost per square metre is a crude way to price a house, because not all space costs the same to build. A basement, a ground floor, an upper floor, a void, a garage, a roof overhang, each carries a different cost, and treating them as one figure hides more than it reveals.

We have developed a weighted method that accounts for what is actually being measured, which produces a realistic rate for the core build. To that we add a percentage for fit-out, the kitchens, bathrooms, fixed joinery, furniture, blinds, curtains and AV systems, and a further percentage for landscape. Larger one-off elements, a pool, a sauna, a wine room, are then itemised individually.

The result is an all-in cost, expressed as an adjusted rate per square metre. It is worth saying plainly that this figure is usually higher than the numbers people are quoted elsewhere, because those quotes typically cover the core build alone. An honest figure at the outset is far more useful than a comfortable one that unravels later. Too often a client arrives with a budget already fixed and expects the brief to be shoehorned into it. The feasibility study exists to test, openly, whether the brief and the budget can actually meet, and to do so before anyone is committed to a design.

All of this is brought together in a single document, the feasibility study itself. It opens with an executive summary, followed by an evaluation of the brief, both hard and soft, and an assessment of the site and its surveys. It sets out the planning context, the surveys and consultants the project will need, and the early options and massing studies. It includes outline costs, an indicative programme, and the construction and procurement options open to the client. It closes with our conclusions and clear recommended next steps. The client is left with a considered, written basis for deciding how, and whether, to proceed. The value of this work is that every significant issue has been examined before a full commitment to design is made. It gives client and architect a shared and honest understanding of what the project is, what it will involve and what it is likely to cost. A good house depends on a sound foundation, and for us that foundation is the feasibility study. It is where we suggest every client begins.