An enquiry arrives asking whether something can be built on a particular site. It is two sentences long and it is a genuine project.
Answering it properly requires knowing the constraints, the ground, the access, the intended use, the budget and the planning position. Answering it improperly takes thirty seconds and creates a liability.
Most consultancies do neither. They reply asking for a meeting, which is a fourth option that loses the enquiries from people who wanted to know whether it was worth having one.
Step 1: recognise what is actually being asked
Early enquiries are usually asking whether something is possible rather than requesting a design. Treating a feasibility question as a delivery enquiry mismatches the whole conversation.
Step 2: establish the location first
Almost every constraint in this field is site specific. Without a location nothing useful can be said, and with one a great deal can be narrowed immediately.
Step 3: establish what they are trying to achieve
Not what they have asked for. Clients arrive with a solution in mind and the useful conversation is about the outcome behind it.
Step 4: ask what information already exists
Surveys, drawings, reports, planning history and anything from a previous adviser. Clients frequently hold considerably more than they mention.
Step 5: ask what constraints they already know about
Access, services, neighbours, planning, ground conditions or a regulatory issue. Clients usually know about at least one and rarely volunteer it.
Step 6: establish the timescale and what drives it
A funding deadline, a lease expiry or a planning window. This determines whether the project is real and what sequence of work makes sense.
Step 7: establish who else is involved
Architect, contractor, planning consultant, funder or a local authority. Understanding the team shapes both the scope and the risk.
Step 8: explain what a feasibility stage delivers
A written assessment, options, constraints and an indicative cost. Clients who do not know what they would receive cannot value it.
Step 9: charge for it and say why
It is professional judgement with liability attached. A modest fixed fee filters seriousness and it frames the work correctly, which is the same distinction as retainer versus project questions from new pr clients.
Step 10: keep the free advice general
Explaining what a process involves is helpful. Offering a view on a specific site without information is where professional risk lives.
Step 11: explain the indemnity position early
Clients ask, funders require it and it belongs in the first conversation, which is the ground in insurance and indemnity questions from clients.
Step 12: explain what happens after feasibility
The stages, roughly what each involves and how fees are structured. Clients commit more readily to a first stage when they can see the shape of the whole.
Step 13: decline the ones that are not viable
Quickly and with a reason. An honest early no is worth more to both parties than three weeks of politeness.
Step 14: capture all of it at the first contact
An assistant that collects the location, the objective, existing information, known constraints, timescale and the wider team hands an engineer an enquiry they can price in twenty minutes rather than a two sentence message. That is the same early stage capture described in feasibility study enquiries from developers and councils and the structured explanation in how financial advisors use chatbots to answer client questions. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under b2b.