X Plans has grown out of the founder's work as an ARB Registered Architect. During his 30+ years running practices of various sizes, he has often found it a challenge to manage the variable workflow - sometimes having staff with too little to do, whilst at other times lacking enough resources. In addition some simpler, repetitive tasks (such as simple building surveys for domestic work) were not profitable or a good use of skilled in-house staff and were better outsourced.

Temporary staff offered a solution to these issues but taking them on through traditional recruitment agencies proved very expensive, whilst using the well-established freelancer websites could be rather hit and miss, with many candidates being based overseas. As such it normally came down to using a network of contacts - fine in theory but sometimes it was too limited, being reliant on just a few individuals who may not always be available. From these experiences, the idea for X Plans was formulated- a flexible outsource solution to enable Architects to scale quickly, offload work they cannot do and to free-up their time for design, marketing and client-facing activities.

The idea behind our platform is to create a community for those seeking flexible work to engage with those looking for help. This gives a wide range of highly skilled, highly motivated people the opportunity to work flexibly, whilst practices can benefit from this talent pool which may not be looking for permanent employment but still has much to offer. To make this viable though we needed to avoid the high fees of a traditional staffing agency, so we decided to strip it back to be more of an introduction service, where employers just pay a modest fee to be able to make contact with candidates. This has the advantage that having made the initial contact, clients are free to then continue to use the services of freelancers without incurring any ongoing costs. Temporary or short-term engagements can also turn into a permanent position - again without any further fees being charged.

Candidates who register with us select the types of services they wish to offer and are asked to provide a CV and portfolio. These are uploaded to their candidate's page (with personal details removed) so employees can select who they would like to contact about their projects. This makes the selection process as simple and transparent as possible - the only unknown at this preliminary stage is the candidate's contact details which are provided on a small one-off fee is paid.