About · 02 / 04

About the practice and the person behind it.

Founder · Joseph Holmes

A compounded practice, by intent.

I am an urban planner, land and property developer, Army cryptologic linguist, and software engineer. First State Design is the surface where those backgrounds meet a client's real problem: a property that needs a feasibility model, a portfolio that needs document automation, a team that needs a research assistant trained on its own corpus.

The premise is that compounded operators see a wider plane than specialists do, and that affordable housing in particular benefits from someone fluent in both QAP language and Python.

Brandywine Blue Gneiss outcrops along Brandywine Creek in northern Delaware. The stone is layered, durable, and unrepeatable. The brand and the practice take their cue from it.

How the work runs.

Engage
A 30-minute call to scope. If the question is not the right one, I will say so before any agreement.
Frame
A short written framing: the question, the deliverable, the cost, the timeline, the assumptions, the risks. One page when possible.
Build
Weekly written updates. Small artifacts shipped continuously, not a single reveal at the end.
Hand off
Code, models, memos, and a written handoff that anyone on the client team can re-run six months later.

Standing.

UEI
HL5RCBFNFFJ4
CAGE
8NV10
BOIR
Filed
NAICS
541611 · 541512 · 541990