The most awesome project that turned out not to be

Post date: Jul 30, 2014 10:35:57 PM

A little bit ago, we were approached by a homeowner that wanted a custom arch truss in his house.  The wood worker that was going to build it had built a few before, but wanted an engineered design for this iteration. The wood worker provided some pictures of past, similar, projects.  They are awesome.  Below are my pictures from the original inspiration.  The woodworker provided a layout.  We visited the woodworkers shop to observe joinery techniques.  We did research on glue bond strength, we ran a few preliminary numbers based on the layout.

And that's when it started to be less awesome.  We couldn't get the truss to work.  Not only that, it was so far off that we came to the realization that we could NEVER pencil whip this truss into working.  

We ended up having a very frank discussion with the client and told him that we could morph the truss into something that would work by the numbers- but that it wouldn't match the design aesthetic he was looking for.  He agreed that the aesthetic was an overriding factor.  We ended our contract with almost 70% left in unbilled potential.

What is the point of me telling you about, essentially, a failure?  Well, the point is that Outlier did something very hard.  We judged that the end product would not be in the client's best interests.  We gave up revenue so that, as soon as possible, the best interests of the client could be served.  And that's what we offer you, too.  Integrity and sincerity in every project.