On Ask Us Anything, BOH editor in chief Kaitlin Petersen taps former Trade Tales guests to answer real, confidential designer questions, offering a safe space to discuss business challenges. Have a question of your own to ask? Send an email to start the conversation.

This week, Seattle-based interior designer Lauren Caron of Studio Laloc answers a question from a designer who wants to scale their business beyond their home city without sacrificing their firm’s standards. This designer prizes communication, delivering weekly reports from in-person site visits that their clients truly value. They are concerned that expansion might compromise that engagement—and their firm’s level of service.

Caron jumps in with advice on billing clients for travel time, shares how she maximizes site visits for local and remote work, and emphasizes the value of an exhaustive scope-of-work document.

Crucial insight: On remote projects, Caron sets expectations from the outset with local contractors, stressing the need for frequent communication. That involves Zoom check-ins and a large amount of documentation, including photos and videos, deposited on a weekly basis in a shared drive where clients, contractors and the design team can view progress. In her experience, those requirements put the onus on the local team to ramp up their attention to detail—and their level of accountability. “It flips the coin a bit and requires them to be more responsible,” she says. “Perhaps they see more things that they wouldn’t see if they just relied on you to find issues or updates.”

Key quote: “After the clients have approved our initial concept design, we do a meeting with the contractors [where] I present that concept design to them as well, and show them our level of expectation. I also show them our portfolio. I think that’s been really helpful for them to get the understanding of what we’re looking for, and that we require a certain level of attention to detail. When you don’t have those partners, it does make the project really challenging.”

This episode was sponsored by Four Hands and Crypton. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.