Prior to giving you my view on the importance of giving time for the design of a project, I want to point out the incredible insights of these three respected people.
Don Norman is a design critic who produced a good, little video on how design makes people happy. It's quite entertaining and he makes good points about how emotions dictate how people interact with design elements.
http://www.ted.com/talks/don_norman_on_design_and_emotion.html
Graphic designer and writer Stefan Sagmeister did a charming video on happy design; design that makes the end user happy and being happy designing.
http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_shares_happy_design.html
Author and speaker Daniel Pink is one of my favorites. He wrote "Drive" which is a book about what motivates people. He is a funny and eloquent speaker and he emphasizes the value of right-brained thinking, which he wisely points out, cannot be outsourced.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
Why do we mention these three men and their beliefs? Because design is more than seeing how quickly we can put together permit drawings. There is a process that gets better results. To touch on a point Daniel Pink makes, you hire us and people like us because of what we have the ability to create. This creation takes time, motivation, effort, inspiration, individual thought and a love for the process. You can't outsource what is being created in our brains.
During initial walk-throughs of a space we are always asked how quickly we can produce drawings. Deadlines are important of course, but taking some time to consider what the design can and should be adds more value to the build-out and is easily as important as a completion date. The point of having a period of time dedicated to a focused and sustained effort is to come up with the best ideas for the design. Assigning importance to the design process produces long lasting results. If you make an unreasonable deadline your highest priority, the design will suffer and as a result, so might your business.
Taking time to create an environment inspires the designer to come up with great ideas. Sometimes they will invent something never seen before. Ideas on technology may change how a space functions or perhaps an idea on a new way of operating changes the client's idea of how they run their business or changes what they envisioned their space to be. If you don’t allow time to let us research and imagine, you will be losing out on a great business opportunity.