By most accounts, this is not the best time to start a business in the home industry, but that is what Herndon resident Mina Fies did last month, when she launched Synergy Design and Construction Inc. The Reston-based company consists of Fies, her husband Mark and designer Michelle Cini, who currently lives in D.C. but plans to return soon to her hometown of Reston.

The trio hopes to find success despite the plummeting economy by reshaping the process of home renovation.

The concept is relatively simple. Normally, homeowners who want to renovate contact a number of contractors and each company comes up with its own vision for the project and its own price tag. Instead, Synergy works through a detailed design with the homeowner and then puts the project out to bid among three or four of the 11 or so contractors with whom the company partners.

"We know we’re bringing the best price for the plan we know they want," said Fies, the company’s founder and CEO, noting that homeowners often have a hard time comparing prices when different contractors are proposing different plans made with different products and materials.

"The whole reason Mina and Mark and I wanted to start this was because we’ve seen the frustration on the part of not just the homeowner but also contractors," Cini said. She has been working as an interior designer and architect for six years and previously worked with Mina Fies at a home renovation company, now defunct.

Fies has worked in sales and marketing for design firms for 16 years and is a licensed real estate agent and mortgage specialist. Mark Fies, a business manager by trade, works behind the scenes as the company’s chief financial officer.

"No one expects two women to show up when they call a construction contractor," Cini said.

"The looks we get — ‘You’re not actually going to do the work, are you?’" Mina Fies laughed.

They don’t do the heavy lifting.

FOR EACH PROJECT, the two women work out a few different plans and then, with the homeowner, combine elements of each plan into a final design, which specifies "everything from the faucet to the light fixtures to the towel bar," Mina Fies said. The project is put out to bid among a few contractors the company knows well and that operate in the price range and scope of the renovation, and then Synergy acts as the homeowner’s agent throughout the construction. "So the client doesn’t end up being their own project manager," she said.

The process is similar to the approach that is usually taken in commercial design-and-build projects.

"Our concept is absolutely working. We’re not only getting interest from clients, we’re getting interest from contractors," Fies said, noting that the contractors save money in marketing and design work.

"They do a great service for both the homeowner and also the general contractor," agreed Jason Kirkpatrick, owner of Kirkpatrick Construction in Centreville. He said his company often competes with other contractors who aren’t offering comparable plans or quality and that homeowners may not know the difference. "We try to educate homeowners on choosing a contractor," he said, "even if they don’t choose us."

Kirkpatrick said he didn’t know of any other company following Synergy’s model. "There are companies out there that try to capitalize on connecting the homeowner with the contractor. What they do is so much more," he said, adding that Synergy capitalized on having each project built by the best contractor possible. "They’re not going to bring me in on a project that’s not a good fit," he said.

Kirkpatrick said his company does "very complicated projects that others don’t want to or don’t know how to" and only operates in Northern Virginia. Only when Synergy has a job that fits that profile does he expect to be contacted.

Kirkpatrick said he had also just brought Synergy in to work on one of his own projects, a partial home renovation and large addition to a home. He said he had only ever brought one other outside designer in to work with him. "For me to bring anyone else in on any of our projects takes a lot," he said, noting that he appreciated Synergy’s professionalism and ethics.

Having just launched, Synergy does not have any completed projects yet, but one project Fies and Cini designed together was the basement of Ashburn residents Brian and Suzanne Pirko, which was completed last May.

AT FIRST, Suzanne Pirko said, the couple just wanted drywall and a bathroom. "Michelle walked us through and had great suggestions that we never would have thought of on our own."

The 1,800-square-foot basement now houses a home theater, a family room, a kitchenette, a home office, a playroom, a storage room and open spaces, as well as the requisite bathroom.

Because of the arrangement and number of supporting poles in the community’s basements, most of the Pirkos’ neighbors have much of their basements taken up by a single long, open space. Cini avoided this design by placing the family room and kitchenette at an angle, hiding the poles in the walls and carving a number of smaller areas out of the space.

"It feels more like an upstairs than a basement," Pirko said. "People always say it doesn’t feel like a basement."

Cini said this was a function of hiding the poles in walls, rather than in columns.

With the market depressed, Fies said, more people who might have moved are now trying to make their current homes more livable places to wait out the slump and are also looking for ways to make their houses more valuable for the time when they do sell. Many are also "in cash positions," having taken their money out of market investments and seeking other ways to invest it, she said.

And, she said, real estate investments remain among the safest.