Three years of projects not on the website
A prospective client looks at your website. The most recent project is from three years ago. Since then, the practice has completed a striking house extension, a school building and several refurbishments. The professional photos were taken, the director was delighted, and then nothing happened. Adding a project to the website means choosing images, resizing them, writing a description, checking the client is happy to be featured and logging into a content management system that nobody has used for a year.
Meanwhile the practice's awards entries, bid documents and social posts all need the same material, and each time someone gathers it from scratch.
Why the portfolio stalls
Nobody owns it. The directors are designing, the project architects have moved to new jobs, and there is no marketing person, or there is one part-time person juggling everything. The material is spread across the project folder, the photographer's download link and emails. Client permission is not recorded, so there is hesitation about publishing. And website editors can be awkward for occasional users.
- Nobody is responsible for adding projects.
- Photos and project facts are scattered.
- Client and photographer permissions are unclear.
- Each project page is built by hand in the website editor.
- The same material is gathered again for bids and awards.
What a stale portfolio costs
Prospective clients judge a practice largely on its portfolio. A website that stops years ago suggests the practice is less active than it is. Search engines have less recent content to show. And the effort of producing bid and award material is repeated because there is no finished, reusable project write-up.
A portfolio workflow that starts at completion
- When a project is marked as complete, a portfolio task is created with the key facts already filled in from project records: location, type, size, stage, team and contractor.
- Photos are pulled from the project's photography folder or the site photo library, and the architect picks the ones to feature.
- A language model drafts a short project description from the brief, the design statements and the facts, in your practice's voice, for the architect to edit.
- Client permission to feature the project, and the photographer's usage terms, are requested and recorded, with options such as anonymising the location.
- Once approved, the project page is published to your website in a consistent layout, with image sizes and search basics such as page titles handled automatically.
- The same write-up and images are stored as a project sheet for bids and award entries.
We work with your existing website where it allows it, such as WordPress or another content management system with an API, or build a simple portfolio section if not.
Catching up on the backlog is usually the first job. We load the completed projects that never made it to the website, gather their photos and facts, and put them through the same draft, permission and approval steps, so the portfolio is brought up to date in one go rather than one project at a time whenever someone finds an hour.
Each completed project produces
| Output | Used for |
|---|---|
| Website project page | Prospective clients, search |
| Project sheet | Bids, frameworks, awards |
| Permission record | Confidence to publish |
| Selected images | Social posts, presentations |
A website that shows what you do now
Completed projects appear on the website within a reasonable time of completion, once permission is in place, without anyone wrestling the editor. Prospective clients see current work. Bid writers find finished project sheets ready to use. And the practice has a record of what it is allowed to publish.
Is your portfolio stuck?
- Your most recent website project is years old.
- Professional photos sit unused in a folder.
- Client permission to publish is not recorded.
- Bid and award write-ups are produced from scratch each time.