Stop 8 of 8 · Weekly
Nadine's week
Fee letters and proposals with the numbers left blank, three routines on a timer, the concept deck in Claude Design, and one project taken from brief to permit checklist.
The fee letter and the proposal
Nadine writes more fee letters than concept narratives, and the ones that go wrong go wrong on scope. Claude drafts the scope, the phases, the deliverables per phase and the exclusions, which is most of the letter and all of the argument. Every amount is a bracket she fills from the studio rate sheet after the draft is closed.
Draft the fee letter for a [retail tenant improvement] in my studio format. Phases: programming, schematic design, design development, construction documents, permitting, construction administration. For each phase, the deliverables in a short list and what the client provides. Then exclusions, then reimbursables, then the assumptions the fee depends on, then the additional services trigger. Put [fee] where each amount goes and list every bracket at the end so I can fill them. No amounts, no percentages, no hourly rates.
Three routines
A routine runs on a timer with your connectors and leaves drafts. None of these makes a decision.
Read my Outlook for the last seven days and my project folders. Give me one digest per live project: open RFIs with their age, client questions nobody answered, submittals or resubmittals due in the next ten days, and long lead items with no confirmed lead time. Put anything that is blocking a trade at the top. Draft nothing except a one line chase email for each unanswered client question, saved as a draft. Do not send.
Check my inbox and each jurisdiction portal folder for new plan-check correspondence on my open applications. For anything new, build the response matrix: comment number, the comment in one line, the sheet and detail that answers it, what changes, and who does it. Leave the response text blank on any comment that turns on a code section. Save one document per project.
For each active project, read this month's minutes, site visit reports and issued documents and draft the invoice narrative: the phase, what was delivered this month in three bullets, and the percentage of the phase I should confirm. Leave every amount as [fee]. Save as drafts for me to price and send.
The concept deck
Claude Design builds the client facing deck straight out of the approved narrative. Give it the concept narrative, the space plan checklist and your studio deck as the format to follow, and ask for image frames left empty with a caption saying what belongs there. The renderings are yours to place. Export to PowerPoint when the client team needs to edit it, PDF when they need to approve it.
The capstone
| You want to | Do this |
|---|---|
| Start a project | Read back the brief, site notes and plan |
| Fill the schedule | Catalogues in, source column on every row |
| Write a spec sheet | Cut sheet in, brackets for anything missing |
| Check code | Checklist of items to verify, then open the code |
| Submit | Reconcile against the jurisdiction's own checklist |
| Answer comments | Response matrix, blanks are yours |
| Quote a job | Scope with Claude, amounts from your rate sheet |